![]() ![]() The five largest wildfires recorded in the state have all occurred since 2018. But unusually early rains unleashed by a tropical storm in mid-September tempered the blaze and helped fire crews contain it.Ĭalifornia has seen larger, hotter and more intense wildfires in recent years, driven by extended drought and climate change. 6 northeast of Sacramento during a record-breaking late-summer heat wave. The Mosquito fire, this year’s largest, started on Sept. Instead, a combination of well-timed precipitation and favorable wind conditions seemed to play the biggest role. This year’s relatively mild wildfire season doesn’t mean that the landscape was much less vulnerable, that the forests were in better condition or that climate change had less of an effect on the intensity and behavior of wildfires than in previous years, Ms. “It’s really just that we got lucky,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, a fire advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension. ![]() Wildfires have burned about 362,000 acres this year, compared with 2.5 million acres last year and a historic 4.3 million acres in 2020. Yet, by the year’s end, California had managed to avoid widespread catastrophe. It is Yuba County, not Yupa County.When a string of wildfires broke out in California this spring, experts saw it as an unsettling preview of another destructive fire season to come - the consequence of forests and grasslands parched by persistent drought and higher temperatures fueled by climate change. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency. “I see no reason to relax and think this is something that will end in the future.”Ĭorrection: The original version of this story misstated the name of one of the counties where California Gov. “Fires are always going to be present with us, and there are always going to be ones that we simply cannot be able to control,” Glen MacDonald, the John Muir Memorial Chair of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, told TIME in June. ![]() Even this season, which was the first after the end of a six-year drought, was similar in its devastation to those in recent years, where fires caused lasting damage and burned beyond the summer months. Severe, long-lasting fire seasons have become the new normal in California, officials have said. While the majority of destructive wildfires burned up north, an aggressive one also broke out in the hills of Anaheim, Calif., in the southern part of the state, where thousands of residents evacuated and eerie skies filled with smoke over Disneyland, the amusement park located in the city.ĭue to dry vegetation and seasonal wind patterns, October typically is t he most dangerous month for wildfires in California.Ĭal Fire keeps an updated map of each active fire, which can be viewed below. The city of Santa Rosa, Calif., experienced immense damage as the fire ripped through its residential streets - an atypical path of destruction from the hillsides and rural neighborhoods many of the wildfires in California destroy. While a number of active wildfires burn across the state, 17 new, aggressive ones grew this week, Cal Fire said. Some Red Flag Warnings, which mean conditions are ideal for fast-moving fires, are still in place, according to the state’s department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in Napa, Sonoma and Yuba counties, as well as in Butte, Lake, Mendocino, Nevada and Orange counties. Fast-moving wildfires tore through California this week, destroying 1,500 homes, wineries and businesses in what has become one of the deadliest outbreaks in the state’s history.Ī number of wildfires swept across Northern California in Napa and Sonoma counties just north of San Francisco - killing at least 17 people and forcing thousands of residents evacuate their homes as firefighters struggled to contain the roaring flames that have scorched tens of thousands of acres.Ĭalifornia Gov. ![]()
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