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Exclusive: Dallas Raines wasn’t born in the City of Angels, but few Angelenos exemplify Southern California like the Georgia-bred ABC7 News chief meteorologist, a perspective that is especially true in times of extreme weather like the hurricane-force winds and raging wildfires that have cut a seemingly unprecedented destructive swath through the region this past week.

“This is one of the most beautiful places in the world, but these winds and fires are things that we are going to have to deal with forever,” the 40-year resident of L.A. said bluntly Monday, as he prepared to go on-air for the West Coast flagship of Disney-owned ABC.

Since winds began gusting last week, Los Angeles County has seen fires scorch tens of thousands of acres, decimate thousands of homes and other buildings, and forced hundreds of thousands to be evacuated. More than two dozen people are dead, that we know of so far.

Kabc-tv chief meteorologist Dallas Raines has been at ABC’s flagship Los Angeles station since 1984, so you’d think he’s seen everything he could ever see when it comes to Southern California weather. But Hurricane Hilary is a first, even for him, and he’s ready for it.

“It’s really a crazy situation,” he tells Variety. “This is my 40th year of forecasting weather in Southern California, and there have been many opportunities for tropical cyclones that have come up out of Mexico. I would go year after year during hurricane season, ‘Maybe this is the year that conditions are gonna be perfect to bring something up into Southern California.’ Every year, it would be no. You need a perfect situation for these cyclones to actually come up on that trajectory and hold together once they encounter the cold water that’s off the California coastline. It’s about a once-in-a-century event.

Local public broadcaster Kcet was once again the major winner at this year’s Los Angeles Area Emmys, and then, when combined with its sister station Koce (“PBS SoCal”), the two outlets further dominated the awards. Kcet won eight Emmys this year, the most of any station, followed by Univision’s Kmex-tv, which won five. Telemundo’s Kvea won four, and then there was Koce, with three.

That means the combined Kcet/Koce won eight Emmys overall, easily leading all other stations and duopolies.

Kcet’s wins included L.A. Local Color, for “Transformation (Broken Bread),” as well as entertainment, for “Jazz City (SoCal Connected).” Other big winners included Knbc, for daytime newscast (11 a.m. to 7 p.m.) and Kabc, for evening newscast (7 p.m. to midnight). Kmex and Kvea tied for morning news (4 a.m. to 11 a.m.).

The 72nd Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards were handed out virtually this year,...