Not Even Peak Wildfire Season Yet
It’s not even the peak of the wildfire season in California but a Record-Breaking 2 Million Acres have Burned Already.
There have been “900 wildfires since August 15 but the heart of the fire season has not even started yet.”
Santa-Ana Winds
The peak starts when the seasonal Santa-Ana Winds begin.
The Santa Ana winds are strong, extremely dry downslope winds that originate inland and affect coastal Southern California and northern Baja California. They originate from cool, dry high-pressure air masses in the Great Basin.
Santa Ana winds are known for the hot, dry weather that they bring in autumn (often the hottest of the year), but they can also arise at other times of the year.They often bring the lowest relative humidities of the year to coastal Southern California. These low humidities, combined with the warm, compressionally-heated air mass, plus high wind speeds, create critical fire weather conditions. Also sometimes called “devil winds”, the Santa Anas are infamous for fanning regional wildfires.
The LA Times explains What makes the Santa Ana winds blow through Southern California?
Santa-Ana Winds Started Today
A Red Flag Fire Weather Warning issued for San Diego County due to Santa Ana winds
“Strong north to northeast winds will begin first in San Bernardino and Orange counties, then spread southward this afternoon and into San Diego County late this afternoon and tonight,” the weather service says in an advisory.
Forecasters say the winds will blow 20 to 30 mph with gusts up to 45 mph to 55 mph in the windiest locations.
The winds could make it harder for fire fighters to continue to fight the huge Valley fire near Alpine.
Wildfire Map
Comparison to August 23
On August 23, I totaled up the acres burnt and matched the reported totals.
For details, please see Tweets of the Day: Over 1 Million Acres in California are On Fire
Using the current BLM map, I did so again.
Federal Responsibility
State and Local Responsibility
Notes
- Fires marked with a “*” are new since my previous spreadsheet on August 18.
- Fires marked with an “-” no longer appear on the report.
- On fires marked with an “-” I assume 100% containment at the number of acres I showed previously.
- I may have missed fires started and put out in the interim.
- Points 3 and 4 lead to an huge undercount in acres burnt in my totals.
Southern Utah Report
Yesterday Afternoon the air in Southern Utah was so smoky from the fires that we could look straight at the sun in midday even though there were no clouds.
The sun looked pink, mid-day, through the smoke. Today it is much colder and breezy.
Temperatures dropped from 106 degrees yesterday to about 70 degrees now with the wind shift.
The cooler weather and less smoke suits us here, but the breeze will make matters much worse for those in California.
Best wishes to all impacted by these devastating fires.
Mish
gfhjntfgukutk
Makes me wonder, which is worse C19 or climate change, or is everything connected rather ?
There is a story on ABC 7 about Oklahoma offering cash to Bay Area residents to move there. The comments section (on facebook) is filed with people saying they love living in California so much, they would rather be homeless in their car in CA, than have a house in Oklahoma. I guess the draw of the worlds best food, weather and entertainment is strong.
A fire started yesterday in Ashland Oregon and burned north in very hot dry winds and has now burned most of the cities of Talent including the apartment complex where I lived in 2015, and then further into Phoenix Oregon and up into Medford itself. Jackson County has 220,000 people most of whom live in the Medford area and all these towns touch each other or at most are a few miles apart. People were evacuated to the fairgrounds where no shelter is available but they are in open land that can be protected from flames, and food and water can be distributed, but within a few hours the site was full and traffic meant you could not get close to the site, so another fairgrounds in the the city of Grants Pass 35 miles away in Josephine County has been commandeered to send people to.
The forecast is for temps over 100 with gusty winds, the fire resources are overstretched and now going on 20 hours without rest. If this gets into the city of Medford proper you will see it on the evening news, already hundreds of houses and businesses have been destroyed.
This by the way is the city I just moved to Florida from in April.
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Supriya
Yea, no such thing as global warming
Global warming has nothing to do with this. The problem is too many people moving into wild areas and starting fires.
Possibly. However these lands all naturally burn every few years. I was just up in the northwest corner of Angeles National forest and was appalled at the amount of old dead brush and shrubs, the fuel has been getting stored up for years since we stopped doing controlled burns and stop the fires. Its like stored gasoline up there.
Chapperel and dry hot weather
They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won’t Anybody Listen? — ProPublica
My family is from up in the Sierra of Calif just north of lake Tahoe. Miners/ranchers/store owners. For 100 yrs. As us kids drove around those mtns w/our dad he remarked, ‘the Cornish taught us hard rock mining, the Chileans and Mexicans taught us placer mining and the Indians taught us how to manage the forests. You know, kids, us Californians have forgotten all that history’. Much later, we were up in the Oakland hills and he said, ‘Those damn kids from UC Agr college actually thought planting these damn Eucalyptus was a good idea. Boy, have they got a surprise coming from these living torches!” Thanks for that article, but I’ve known for ages.
As I said in a previous thread, if you want to live in a limited access, rural place that has a decent chance of burning to the ground at any point in time, it seems reasonable that you should have a fallout shelter/safe room built below ground that can store your important documents, valuables and memories, keeping them away from looters. Also potentially keeping you and and your family alive for at least a few days if necessary.
I wonder how many people have places like this? Has to be at least a few. But where would they get O2 from if the fire sweeps over them?
Marty Raney could build one using things found in the back yard.
I’ve seen nice underground homes built from shipping containers. I would still evacuate but the home would not be incinerated
I’ve seen nice underground homes built from shipping containers. I would still evacuate but the home would not be incinerated
Another update from Nevada County: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0wywKMyXzA
Why did you use a black lives matter map?
Joke? Bureau of Land Management.
This is now as bad as the smoke has been in my area since the Paradise fire. Saturday the AQI was 50. Today it is 450 and rising. There was smoke on our 3rd floor office building in Placer county.
Update from Nevada County 30 minutes ago.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzmZtP8yt_4
From Nevada County posted 3 hours ago:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tYMX5goAlg
Snowing hard right now in Denver. Amazing, 100 yesterday, and below freezing tonight.
Another example of Democratic mismanagement. Having lived there for many years, I saw it first hand. The liberal environmentalists have made it illegal to clear dead brush, or clear land so the fire danger rises year after year until fire hits and then it is unstoppable. Democrats destroy either by design, or by sheer idiocy, either way, they are the locusts of mankind…
Malden WA (West of Rosalia) is no more. The fire near Omak jumped the Columbia River and burned down to US 2. Yesterday was an interesting day. I’ve spent this morning vacuuming, mopping and washing ashes and dust out of the house. I’m 30 miles south of US 2.
Wow – glad you are OK
California now showing some areas with very hazardous air quality. Chester, Plumas reads 834, and Kings, California reads 816. Anything over 300 is hazardous.
The sky is yellow and nasty… but it fends off the blasting sun at least.
Keep that HEPA filter running on high. Good luck to you.
Washington has a pretty fast burning fire in the area of Omak that just started Sunday night, and in 36 hours, it has burn 314,000 acres, including an additional 114,000 acres in the last 6 hours or so.
CA has 104.765 million acres of land. So we still have 102.765 million acres NOT burned. Perspective is everything.
So you’re saying there is a lot more to burn?
We have two basic kinds of land here: Burned, and Will Burn
Humm 104.765 million acres * 15.5 (going rate to weed eat) to rake*mmmuh say 10 hr an acre * 2 twice a yr+ 500 to cut a tree here and there. I dont know how much this amounts to. But sure does make the cost of addressing man made climate change sound more reasonable
I live 20 miles west of the El Dorado fire, average city, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that these events don’t affect most Californians. I still woke up, put my pants on one leg at a time, and came to work. Same goes for most of us. If you live in the foothills or mountains of California, you know the risk. Hopefully the edge and downtown area of Yucaipa is ok, they have great annual spring, fall and Christmas festivals. (Normally)
Pants? PANTS?!?! PANTS are the YOKE of our CAPITALIST OPPRESSORS!
DOWN WITH PANTS!
LOL!!
The world is dying around us. Glad I got to see it.
I think, you meant to say: Glad I got to see the last of the vanishing beauty of the world. That’s not selfish. I my experience, the great majority of the humanoids don’t deserve anything better.
Ask any surfer in California when are the winds offshore. Same time every year. Better land management and better infastructure or you could just create a fire tax. Greed burns all
The Big, Dirty Money Behind the California Wildfires https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/09/07/big-dirty-money-behind-california-wildfires