https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...us/567215/
EXCERPT: How bad is California’s current fire season? Numbers don’t seem to capture it. [...] blazes, requiring 14,000 firefighters, are devouring woodlands elsewhere in California. Some of the “smaller” fires this year would have once made history. [...] There aren’t enough people in the U.S. Army to fight the Carr fire,” Scott Stephens, a fire ecologist at UC Berkeley, told The Washington Post.
[...] But there’s something strange about these fires. [...] This spring, rainfall was adequate. And in 2017, the spring rains were enormous and excessive. Both fire seasons, therefore, should have subdued. But both seasons turned out to be anything but. [...] So if forests had plenty of moisture in early June, how did they become tinderboxes by late July?
“The factor that clearly made the difference in 2017, and again in 2018, is heat,” Williams said. “Last summer was record-breaking, or near record-breaking, hot across much of the West, and I believe July 2018 will break records or come close to it again this year. Even if the deep soils are wet following winter and spring, a hot and dry atmosphere seems to be able to overwhelm that effect.” As it turned out, July 2018 was the hottest month in California ever recorded....
MORE: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...us/567215/
EXCERPT: How bad is California’s current fire season? Numbers don’t seem to capture it. [...] blazes, requiring 14,000 firefighters, are devouring woodlands elsewhere in California. Some of the “smaller” fires this year would have once made history. [...] There aren’t enough people in the U.S. Army to fight the Carr fire,” Scott Stephens, a fire ecologist at UC Berkeley, told The Washington Post.
[...] But there’s something strange about these fires. [...] This spring, rainfall was adequate. And in 2017, the spring rains were enormous and excessive. Both fire seasons, therefore, should have subdued. But both seasons turned out to be anything but. [...] So if forests had plenty of moisture in early June, how did they become tinderboxes by late July?
“The factor that clearly made the difference in 2017, and again in 2018, is heat,” Williams said. “Last summer was record-breaking, or near record-breaking, hot across much of the West, and I believe July 2018 will break records or come close to it again this year. Even if the deep soils are wet following winter and spring, a hot and dry atmosphere seems to be able to overwhelm that effect.” As it turned out, July 2018 was the hottest month in California ever recorded....
MORE: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...us/567215/