“I’m asking each of you to be mindful of how quickly a fire can have devastating consequences,” Tyler said. Although the winter of 2016-17 was wet, the summer of 2017 saw a sizeable fire season, with 1.5 million acres burned, including major blazes later that year in Napa and Sonoma counties and the Thomas Fire in Santa Barbara County. On Thursday, Cal Fire Director Joe Tyler used the summer of 2017 to show that rainy winters don’t guarantee mild fire summers. Early fall storms in September wet much of the north and south, and persistent fog helped keep fire danger lower than normal. Despite a third year of drought and record heat waves that sent temperatures soaring to 115 degrees in the Bay Area and Southern California, only 363,939 acres burned statewide, a drop of about 85% from the year before. Has misuse taken the spark out of fireworks in California?īut last year was relatively mild. The following year was another bad one, with 2.6 million acres burning, including the Caldor Fire, which forced the evacuation of 20,000 people in South Lake Tahoe. In 2020, heavy smoke from multiple fires choked the Bay Area with the worst air pollution in the world for several days, turning skies orange. The deadliest, the Camp Fire, killed 85 people in November 2018, burning 18,000 homes and other structures in the town of Paradise and other surrounding communities in Butte County. The five largest wildfires in the state’s recorded history all occurred since 2018. That’s in part because of two droughts, hotter summer temperatures, years of overgrown forests that state and federal officials are now racing to thin, and the failure of power lines owned by PG&E and other utilities in dry, windy conditions. “There’s still a big snowpack there this year going into July.”Ĭalifornia has suffered from repeated brutal fire years over the past decade. “Some of our biggest fires occur in the Sierra Nevada,” he said. So far, the moisture levels are about a month behind where they normally would be, he said.Īs hotter weather arrives, Clements said fire risk will increase, particularly in September and October, which are usually the most dangerous for wildfires because conditions are driest and seasonal winds often blow from hot inland areas toward the coast.Ĭlements said cooler-than-normal weather the past few months has also contributed to the slow start to fire season. “The higher the fuel moisture, the lower the potential for ignition,” said Craig Clements, director of the Fire Weather Research Lab at San Jose State University. Even though grasses grow high after rainy winters, providing fuel for fires to burn in the summer, moisture levels remain higher in shrubs and trees for longer, fire researchers say. It’s as much of a prediction as a public relations message to remind residents to remain vigilant.īut in recent decades, California’s worst fire years, measured by total acres burned, have happened more often after dry winters than wet winters. Traditionally as summer begins, fire officials warn that every year could be a bad fire year. Through Monday, 2,251 wildfires had started in California this year, compared with 3,284 this time last year and 3,067 on average over the past five years, according to Cal Fire. The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre said the 2023 wildfire season, which has seen 19 million acres burn so far, already is the worst in that country’s recorded history, exceeding 1989.īut in California, where atmospheric river storms this winter ended a three-year drought, caused flooding and buried the Sierra Nevada in the deepest snowpack in 40 years, wet conditions have helped keep wildfires at bay. On Thursday, 487 wildfires burned across Canada, sending thick, choking smoke across East Coast and Midwest cities and parts of Europe. “We live in this new reality,” he added, “where we can’t necessarily attach ourselves to some of the more predictive models of the past because of a world that is getting a lot hotter, a lot drier and a lot more uncertain because of climate change.” “In the last four years, we’ve had two of the most extreme wildfire seasons - some of the worst and most destructive in terms of acreage and property and lives lost - and then two of the more modest fire seasons,” Newsom said during a visit to the Cal Fire Air Attack Base in Grass Valley. Gavin Newsom and state fire leaders urged residents on Thursday not to be complacent as the Fourth of July nears and summer weather begins to heat up. With reservoirs full and snow still deep across the Sierra Nevada following one of the wettest winters in recent decades, California’s fire season is off to a slow start this year.īut Gov.
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