A fire broke out in Sepulveda Pass east of Highway 405 in Bellaire Wednesday night and burned into early Thursday morning.

National Weather Service meteorologist Todd Hall said the fire crossed the highway about a mile north of the Getty Center and spread uphill amid the region's wind gusts, which at one point reached 25 mph. The cause of the fire is extremely dry air; relative humidity is 3% to 8%.

Several fire engines rushed to the scene. Firefighting helicopters dropped water into the nearby Stone Canyon Reservoir overnight and filled it up.

News of the fire broke shortly after 11pm on Wednesday and appeared to be spreading rapidly. Around 1 a.m., television footage appeared to show the fire slowing and the flames dwindling amid relatively calm winds.

At around 2 a.m., the Los Angeles Fire Department said the fire that had burned 40 acres had stopped spreading. Officials lifted evacuation warnings for parts of Bellaire, including homes along Casiano Road and Chalon Road, as well as Moraga Drive, which is lined with value Multi-million dollar homes. Authorities earlier lifted evacuation warnings for parts of Brentwood, including Mount Saint Mary University's Charon campus.

"No structures were damaged and no injuries were reported. Firefighters will remain on scene throughout the night conducting cleanup operations to ensure there are no hot spots," the Los Angeles Fire Department said. Traffic on Route 405 may be slowed "as crews and equipment work along the highway."

Moraga Bel Air Vineyards, owned by Rupert Murdoch, was one of the properties that received an evacuation warning during the fire. Murdoch, 93, reportedly paid $30 million for the 16-acre property in 2013.

Murdoch is understood to have spent time at the estate, part of which was destroyed in the 2017 Skibor fire. He married his fifth wife, former Russian molecular biologist Elena Zhukova, in Moraga last June.

Alexandria Sivak, a spokesperson for the J. Paul Getty Trust, said in an email early Thursday that the Getty Center "activated fire safety measures" because of the fire threat.

A Los Angeles hotel was evacuating 121 people due to the fire in the early stages of the exchange of fire, according to a front desk worker. The hotel is less than two miles from the fire scene on the other side of Highway 405.

Some UCLA students took to social media to express anxiety following news of the fire, even though the university was not located in an evacuation zone.

"I don't even know how to sleep... I have a quiz tomorrow," one Reddit user said.

The Sepulveda fire is the latest in a nerve-wracking week that has put Southern California under a fire weather warning for a fourth straight day. The alert warns that conditions are ripe for fires to ignite and spread rapidly. Red flag warnings have been issued for parts of Southern California on 14 of the past 17 days. The stretch began on January 7, the day the Palisade and Eaton Fires began their devastating spread, leveling large swaths of Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

Thursday will remain a dangerous day for severe fire weather.

"Any new fires have the potential to spread quickly and get out of control," the National Weather Service said in a social media post. "Have a plan, especially if you are in a high fire risk area."

Weather service meteorologist Ryan Kittle said winds in Santa Ana will increase and peak during the day Thursday. The weather service has extended a red flag fire weather warning until 10 a.m. Friday for most of Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

"We're still in a period of prolonged extreme drought and we're looking at the next increase in winds," Kittel said. Humidity has dropped below 10 percent.

Peak wind gusts are expected to be stronger in some areas on Thursday than earlier expected. Wind gusts could reach 45 mph Thursday in the western San Fernando Valley, Oxnard and Grapevine sections of Interstate 5; Ramona 53 mph; Acton 54 mph; Fillmore 55 mph in Fillmore and Idyllwild; 59 mph in Santa Clarita; 62 mph in Thousand Oaks; 68 mph in Beaumont; in Alpine, 69 mph miles per hour.

With the air so dry and not getting moist overnight, it's a "very concerning time for humidity," Kittle said. Plants and other fuels are "ready to burn."

Rain is expected in Southern California. Precipitation could begin as early as Saturday afternoon and continue into Monday night.

Rainfall totals could reach 9-tenths of an inch in Covina; nearly three-quarters of an inch in downtown Los Angeles, Long Beach and Santa Clarita; two-thirds of an inch in Redondo Beach; Fillmore and Canoga Three-fifths of an inch in the park; about half an inch in Thousand Oaks and Oxnard. Wrightwood could see 11 inches of snow and Interstate 5 in Grapevine could see 4 inches of snow.

There is a 10 to 20 percent chance of thunderstorms in the area, which, if present in recently burned areas, could bring heavy rainfall that could lead to mudslides and other landslide risks. Kittle says it's a low-risk but something worth considering.

Kittle said the storm will likely "bring us some good rain" and mitigate the burning fires. But, he added, "It's not going to eliminate fire season. ... It's not going to be enough to crush it."

Firefighters continued to battle the Hughes Fire in northern Los Angeles County on Thursday.

The fire started on Lake Hughes Road around 11 a.m. Wednesday and quickly triggered evacuation orders for Castaic Lake and the surrounding area, and by the afternoon had spread westward into Ventura Ventura County, extending north to near Sandberg. More than 31,000 people were ordered to evacuate, and warnings were issued to 23,000 others.

The fire near Castaic Lake grew in size on Wednesday, and crews began to contain the fire in the evening as ground and air resources were deployed, although Santa Ana winds quickly fanned the blaze to 10,000 acres.

As of 10 p.m. Wednesday, the fire was 14% contained. More than 4,000 firefighters and a dozen aircraft spraying water and fire retardant are responding to the incident.

"We were able to put tens of thousands of gallons of retardant on the south side of the fire because the fire was moving southwest," Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said at a news conference Wednesday. "In addition to all this ground Besides resources, what really gives us the upper hand is the aircraft.”

About 31,000 residents were under evacuation orders and 23,000 residents were under evacuation warnings. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department sent its newly formed Predator Suppression Team to the area to protect evacuated homes.

Winds in the Hughes Fire area are expected to increase again Thursday, peaking in the morning and afternoon, the weather service said.

Malone noted that the Hughes Fire broke out under very different conditions than previous fires.

Although the winds were strong Wednesday, "they were not the 70, 80, 90 mph winds that we experienced on January 7th with the Palisades and Eaton fires."

Additionally, additional firefighting resources are now deployed in the area.

“We have a lot of resources coming from Northern California, the western United States and international sources,” he said. "The number of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft we have available really puts us in a position to fight a fire like this."

Times staff writer Amy Kaufman contributed to this report.