State nears record for acres burned
Nearly 1.5 million acres scorched so far; 1.96 million in 2018
With two of its largest wildfires on record still raging across Northern California, the Golden State already has seen more acres burn in 2020 than all but a handful of years, and it isn’t even September yet.
The four months left on the calendar include the peak of California’s wildfire season in the fall, when warm, dry winds blow offshore from the high deserts across a parched landscape awaiting the winter rains.
That wasn’t lost on Gov. Gavin Newsom as he noted Monday the ominous comparison of what he called “this historic wildfire season” to last year. So far this year, more than 1.4 million acres — double the combined size of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose and Sacramento — have burned in 7,002 separate fires. This time last year, there were 56,000 acres burned in 4,292 fires.
“If I say historic,” Newsom said, “I mean it with purpose
and intention.”
The fires touched off by lightning storms that rolled through Northern California earlier this month have grown into some of the state’s largest.
The 350,030-acre LNU Lightning Complex Fire near Vacaville, just 22% contained, is now the state’s second-largest ever. And the 347,196-acre SCU Lightning Complex Fire in the South and East Bay, only 10% contained as of Monday afternoon, is now the third-largest. The CZU Lightning Complex Fire in Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties reached 78,000 acres Monday afternoon and was just 13% contained.
Just eight months into the year, this year’s fire season already ranks “up in the top five,” said Lynnette Round, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
And the numbers grow every hour. Firefighters are now battling 625 individual blazes, including 17 major fires, Newsom said. Other major fires include the 49,520-acre Butte-Tehama-Glenn Lightning Complex Fire south of Redding, only 13% contained; the 48,424-acre River Fire east of Salinas, 23% contained; and the uncontained 17,776-acre Sheep Fire southwest of Susanville. The state saw 10 new wildfires erupt in the last 24 hours as a second lightning storm moved through over the weekend.
Three of the state’s most extensive wildfire years have come in the last four years, something many climate experts say is driven by an alarming warming trend they tie to carbon dioxide from burning fuels
such as coal, oil and gas. All but three of the state’s 20 largest wildfires on record dating back to the 1930s occurred this century.
California’s record year for wildfires was 2018, with a total of 1.96 million acres consumed by flames from massive blazes. They included the Mendocino Complex Fire — still the state’s largest at 459,123 acres — and the 229,651-acre Carr Fire that July. Four months later in November, the 153,336-acre Camp Fire wiped out the town of Paradise and killed 85 people, becoming California’s deadliest blaze.
The year before, 1.55 million acres in California burned, including the 281,893-acre Thomas Fire in December 2017 in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties and a series of devastating October 2017 wildfires in the Wine Country of Napa and Sonoma counties.
That fire season came on the heels of a record fiveyear drought from 2012
through 2016, which killed more than 100 million trees in the Sierra Nevada.
Before that, the last year with more than 1 million acres burned was 2008, when the state also was jolted by a series of summer lightning storms — by year’s end 6,255 fires combined had consumed 1.59 million acres. Among the largest and most devastating of the fires that year were the Bear Wallow Complex Fire in Siskiyou County that burned 192,038 acres and the Basin Complex Fire that burned 162,818 acres in Monterey County.
“I’m essentially at a loss for words to describe the scope of the lightning-sparked fire outbreak that has rapidly evolved in Northern California — even in the context of the extraordinary fires of recent years,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a Twitter post Sunday, with 800,000 acres burned in the state in the past eight days. He noted in a post
Monday that since then, “an additional quarter of a million acres have burned — putting the California total over one million acres in less than two weeks.”
Weather and fire experts say this year’s wildfires come on the heels of a light rain year with vegetation already drier than usual and primed to burn. And they came amid a record-breaking heat wave that is further drying fuels.
Newsom noted that the CZU Lightning Complex Fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains is burning coastal redwood forest where the fire threat is usually muted by heavy winter rains and summer fog.
“We are in a different climate,” Newsom said, “and we are dealing with different climate conditions that are precipitating fires the likes of which we have not seen in modern recorded history.”