Wildfire near Gilroy could signal more summer heatwave blazes
Fire crews on Friday afternoon battled a blaze west of Gilroy that a meteorologist said could signal more summer wildfires, though those won't spread far without strong, dry winds backing them.
The fire, referred to by Cal Fire as the “Redwood Incident,” was reported around 3:45 p.m. Friday in the 6800 block of Redwood Retreat Road, a heavily forested area not far from some wineries to the west of Gilroy's city limits.
The Cal Fire Santa Clara Unit reported that the fire had grown to 8 acres as of 4:20 p.m., but the size was later reduced to 2 acres due to better mapping.
“Firefighters are making good progress,” Cal Fire said in a social media post Friday evening. Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office deputies were at the scene assisting firefighters.
The blaze sparked in the middle of a Bay Area heat wave that saw local temperatures on Friday peak in the high 90s. As the heat settled into the region, a grass fire in eastern Contra Costa County was suspected to have rekindled after Cal Fires crews believed they extinguished it the day before.
Overall, however, the fire danger during this week's scorching conditions is not as dire as what weather officials flagged ahead of a similar heat wave last month. Authorities had not issued any Bay Area wildfire advisories or red-flag warnings by Saturday, with the weather expected to cool off over the rest of the weekend.
The key difference is that wind speeds in recent days were milder and weather was less dry than what's needed to spread heat-sparked blazes across large distances, National Weather Service meteorologist Brooke Bingaman said Saturday.
“Just because it's 100 degrees out doesn't mean a fire's going to spark up out of nowhere,” Bingaman said. “Yesterday's example in Gilroy — a small vegetation fire of only a couple of acres — means there weren't winds helping it spread. That should happen intermittently throughout the summer.”
Wind speeds are expected to increase overnight Saturday into Sunday, but those are likely to be onshore breezes that bring moisture and cooler conditions from the ocean that actually help fire crews contain blazes.
In addition, San Jose area temperatures are expected to see a decline from the 90s to the low 80s on Sunday afternoon, with similar drops expected in inland Alameda and Contra Costa counties. East Bay cities such as Oakland will likely fall from the 80s to the low 70s.
The most recent heat wave in the Bay Area is a sample of a largely erratic spring-to-summer transition that is “not completely unheard of, but also not super uncommon,” Bingaman said.