(One thing we do know: There will be fewer firefighters this year because many prison inmates who work fire lines for wages and lighter sentences have come down with Covid-19.) California wildfires continue to rage The death toll in wildfires sweeping California has risen to 31, with more than 200 people still missing, officials have said. This year’s fire season, which usually stretches from August to November, is only beginning-and the effects of the continued pandemic remain to be seen. The year prior was even worse: 2018’s wildfire season was the deadliest and most destructive such season ever recorded in California, with 1.9 million acres burned. Forest Service estimated that last year’s fire season burned some 260,000 acres across nearly 8,000 fires in both northern and southern California. (CNN) California's Oak Fire has burned through more than 18,000 acres and destroyed more than 40 structures since it ignited near Yosemite National Park Friday, as fire crews in the air battle. Though the Golden State is no stranger to fire, the phenomenon has become more frequent- and by extension, more dangerous-than ever before. ( For more detail, see the San Francisco Chronicle’s handy fire map here.) The resulting smoke, hazardous to breathe, blanketed the region. “Which means that the current fires are probably harder to fight than they would have been in a cooler world.The coronavirus pandemic, a global economic downturn, protests against racism and police brutality-as if 2020 weren’t stressful enough, Mother Nature decided to turn up the heat.Ī new rash of wildfires ripped across Northern California this month, ravaging broad swaths of land adjacent to one of the most populous metropolitan areas-the San Francisco Bay Area-in the U.S. “These same fires today are occurring in a world roughly three degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it would have been without warming,” says Williams. The total acreage burned fluctuates considerably from year to year, depending on many factors, including luck: Rain dampens things down early, or fires start in places where they are easier to contain.īut climate change is driving a clear trend: When wildfires happen in California, they have a better chance of growing large and destructive. The total number of wildfires in California hasn’t increased in fact the numbers were a lot higher in the 1980s and 1990s than in the past decade. “That's essentially what’s enabled these recent fires to be so destructive, at times of the year when you wouldn't really expect them.” “We've been lengthening fire season by shortening the precipitation season, and we're warming throughout,” says Swain. That's what happened this year, as well as in last year's Thomas fire. So if a fire gets sparked, it can spread fast and hard. In the fall, California is often buffeted by whipping winds. That may seem like a minor issue, but it has big effects. But in the past few years, those rains haven't come until much later in the autumn-November, or even December. “Usually-or, I don't want to even say usually anymore because things are changing so fast-we get some rains around Halloween that wet things down,” says Faith Kearns, a scientist at University of California Institute for Water Resources in Oakland. Each extra day lets plants dry out more, increasing their susceptibility to burning. California's summer dry season has also been lengthening. Since the 1980’s, he and a colleague reported in 2016, climate change contributed to an extra 10 million acres of burning in western forests- an area about the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined.Ĭhanges in precipitation are another factor. Because of this effect of climate change, wildfires are increasing in size, both in California and across the western U.S., says Park Williams, a fire expert at Columbia University.
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