Man charged with starting Holy fire
LOS ANGELES: The Holy fire in the Cleveland National Forest pushed closer to homes yesterday, prompting a new round of evacuations.
The fire, which has burned more than 1600ha, is forcing evacuations in McVickers, Rice Canyon, Horsethief, Glen Eden, El Cariso Village, Sycamore Creek, Syacmore Canyon and Rancho Capistrano, according to the National Forest Service.
A man suspected of starting the fire has been arrested.
Forrest Gordon Clark (51) was arrested on two counts of arson, one count of threat to terrorise and one count of resisting arrest in connection with the ignition of the Holy fire. He is being held on $1 million bond.
The Holy fire was 5% contained yesterday.
Expected higher humidity and cooler temperatures could aid firefighters as they build containment lines around the blaze.
Eighteen wildfires that continue to burn across the state have scorched about 600,000 acres, an area nearly the size of Sacramento County.
The largest of the fires is the Mendocino Complex fire — made up of the Ranch and River fires. The Mendocino fire has burned more than 121,400ha and is the biggest fire ever recorded in California.
About 116 homes have been lost to the Mendocino Complex fire, which still threatened 10,300 structures, officials said.
More than 4000 firefighters are assigned to the fire, including 41 firefighters from Australia and New Zealand. — TNS
THE heat is on. Millions of people across Europe, western parts of Canada and the United States, South Korea and Japan have been sweating their way through a blisteringly hot summer. Little longterm relief appears likely in some places for a month or more yet.
Weeks of temperatures in the high 30s and 40s have sucked every gram of moisture out of soils and vegetation. The inevitable, deadly, fires have turned furnace into inferno, most notably in California, British Columbia and Greece.
New Zealand firefighters have answered the call and are flying in to provide overseas colleagues with muchneeded support and to give them time to rest. The Californian fires are now the largest in the United States’ history.
The heat has been on in our part of the world too, albeit with winter’s moderating influence.
Parts of Australia, notably New South Wales and swathes of inland Queensland, have had an incredibly dry autumn and winter, bad enough for politicians, farmers and others in what is naturally a desiccated continent to wonder if this is the most severe drought in its history.
Reports this week suggest 99% of New South Wales, which produces more than a quarter of the country’s agricultural income, is now in drought. Farmers are said to be praying for rain after planting crops, and stock are being sent to the freezing works because they cannot be fed.
The weather has been less harsh on this side of the Tasman Sea, as is often the case, but here also the seasons appear confused. What we might expect in the South in winter has largely failed to eventuate.
Mild nor’westers continue rolling in, keeping polar southerlies and their snowy, frosty accompaniment at bay. Spring, in fact, looks to have sprung, though there will no doubt be nasty surprises to come. And now forecasters are already making tentative predictions of the summer to come.
Both Niwa and MetService are flagging a chance of an El Nino weather cycle during spring and summer. Seasurface temperatures around the equator across the Pacific Ocean are already slightly warmer than average, MetService says, and the prospects of El Ninoinfluenced weather have risen to about 65% during spring and 70% in summer.
Some media commentators have pounced on these early prognostications and have predicted another much warmer thanaverage summer. But it is not as clearcut as that.
El Nino generally brings drierthannormal conditions along the east coasts of both islands and, in the late summer and autumn, this can combine with hot northwesterlies to bring droughts. But in the South, especially during spring and early summer, the phenomenon often generates lots of cold, squally, southwesterlies with frequent rain.
It would be unlikely an El Nino summer would bring heat to top last year’s recordsetting warmest summer since readings began. The chief influence on that was a rare ‘‘marine heatwave’’, with seasurface temperatures around the country up to 8degC hotter than average.
The heat afflicting many northern parts of the globe cannot be sheeted home directly to climate change, in the same way no single heavy rainfall event or snowstorm can be. But it is the frequency of such occurrences that may reflect changing climate.
In the case of the torrid northern hemisphere summer, meteorologists blame it on changes in the tracks of the jetstreams — ribbons of very strong winds high in the atmosphere that steer weather systems. This has set up a blocking pattern of light winds at the surface, allowing heat to persist.
Whether the jetstream anomaly is down to climate change is difficult to know, although it may be.
Such broadscale changes, however, give more urgency to efforts to reduce emissions before it is too late.