California's Record Fire Season Has Months To Go, With Worst Of Windstorms Still Ahead
EDIT
As of Tuesday morning, California’s uncontained Creek Fire had torched more than 135,000 acres just northeast of Fresno, in between Yosemite and Kings Canyon national parks. More than 200 people were rescued by military helicopter from the fast-growing fire, which surrounded the Mammoth Pool Reservoir area late Saturday. At one point, people were advised to shelter in place and jump into the reservoir if necessary. Nearly 100 more people, mainly trapped hikers, were rescued by helicopter on Tuesday morning from the Lake Edison area. The Creek Fire helped push 2020 ahead of 2018 for the most area burned by wildfire in modern California history, with roughly 2.1 million acres affected statewide as of Monday, according to Daniel Swain (UCLA/National Center for Atmospheric Research).
Parts of Southern California endured the hottest day in their history on Saturday. Temperatures hit 121°F at Woodland Hills – the first official reading of at least 120°F ever recorded in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Ventura, or San Luis Obispo counties. Likewise, a scorching 121°F at Chino was an all-time high for the vast Inland Empire region of San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
EDIT
alifornia has warmed close to 1 degree C (1.8°F) over the past 30 years, with most of that heating coming in late summer and early autumn. Even without any change in precipitation, long-term warming can increase fire risk by pulling more moisture out of parched landscapes. That’s especially true of California’s Mediterranean climate, where rains and mountain snows are concentrated from fall through spring and the summers are notoriously dry. While many of the state’s largest fires occur in late summer, the deadliest and most destructive blazes tend to occur at the tail end of the dry season, from September to December. The most hazardous setups are when strong downslope/offshore winds (typically called Diablo winds in northern California and Santa Ana winds in southern California) arrive before the first heavy rains of autumn.
There’s now evidence that climate change is boosting the risk of extreme wildfire conditions in California autumns, according to an August study published in Environmental Research Letters and led by Michael Goss of Stanford University. Examining weather data for the period from 1979 through 2018, Goss and colleagues found that the most extreme 5% of fire-weather days in autumn – as measured through an index based on temperature, humidity, winds, and precipitation – are now occurring more than twice as often as in the 1980s. In turn, these high-end days are closely associated with extreme autumn wildfires. The authors highlight two from November 2018: the Camp Fire, which decimated the town of Paradise in northern California, and the Woolsey Fire, which rampaged across parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
EDIT
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/09/autumn-could-deliver-the-worst-of-californias-2020-fire-season/