LOS ANGELES — Outdoor cannabis cultivators across Los Angeles County are watching the forecast closely this week as back-to-back weather threats, first gusty Santa Ana winds and then an approaching rain system, are putting late-season crops and dry-stored harvests at serious risk.

The National Weather Service issued fire weather watches for much of the region ahead of the Santa Ana event, with wind gusts forecast to hit 50 to 70 miles per hour across mountain passes and elevated terrain. That kind of velocity can shred greenhouse covers, knock over drying racks, and accelerate moisture loss in plants that cultivators are trying to carry through to a spring harvest window. For growers operating in the hillside zones of the San Gabriel Mountains or along the Santa Monica range, the next 72 hours aren’t going to be easy.

Then comes the rain.

After two days of dry, warmer conditions, forecasters say Los Angeles could see precipitation arrive as early as next week, according to LA Times coverage of the incoming system. That one-two sequence, scouring wind followed by wet weather, is exactly the kind of pattern that triggers mold and botrytis outbreaks in cannabis flowers that weren’t properly hardened off or stored after a winter harvest.

Licensed cultivators in Los Angeles County operate under Department of Cannabis Control oversight and must maintain environmental controls as part of their compliance obligations. Small operators who rely on outdoor or mixed-light grows rather than climate-controlled indoor setups tend to take the hardest hit during weather swings like this one.

David Fonseca runs a licensed mixed-light operation in the Antelope Valley, one of the areas under a fire weather watch this week. He’s been prepping since Monday.

“We’re covering everything we can and pulling some of the drying product into the barn,” Fonseca told California Bud on Thursday. “The wind’s not the worst part. It’s what comes after. You get rain on stressed plants and you’re looking at mold problems that can wipe out weeks of work.”

Fonseca said he’s lost product to similar wind-then-rain sequences twice before and can’t afford a third hit. His current license, a Specialty Cottage Outdoor designation through the DCC, allows for a canopy of up to 2,500 square feet. Small margins leave almost no buffer for weather losses.

The fire danger is real too. Santa Ana conditions in April aren’t as common as the fall events that historically drive California’s worst wildfire seasons, but they carry the same basic ingredients: low humidity, high winds, dry vegetation. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has flagged elevated risk for portions of Los Angeles and Ventura counties through the duration of the wind event. Several cannabis cultivation sites sit in or adjacent to state responsibility areas where fire risk determines buffer requirements and water access rules.

Licensed cultivators in those zones have been through this before. After the 2024 and 2025 fire seasons hammered supply chains across Southern California, a lot of operators added fire suppression infrastructure and negotiated revised emergency access plans with their county ag departments. Whether that preparation holds up against a fast-moving Santa Ana event is a different question.

The rain forecast, while welcome from a drought-management standpoint, adds its own wrinkle. California’s cannabis market has been wrestling with oversupply and depressed wholesale prices for the better part of two years. Product losses from weather events don’t just hurt individual cultivators. They create quality inconsistencies that ripple through to dispensaries trying to maintain reliable inventory for retail customers.

The DCC’s enforcement and licensing portal shows more than 400 active cultivation licenses in Los Angeles County across all license types. How many of those operations have adequate weather protection in place is hard to know from the outside, but industry observers say smaller licensees are far less likely to have invested in full environmental controls.

Fonseca said the broader conversation in his cultivation network this week has shifted away from price complaints and toward basic preparedness. Getting through the wind event without a fire, and then getting through the rain without losing product to mold, is the immediate priority. After that, the market problems will still be there to deal with.

“We just have to get to the other side of this weather first,” he said. “Everything else can wait.”