Every year, late summer and early fall bring sweeping wildfires to the West, and every year, the blazes seem more severe - more destructive, and more tenacious - than the last. In California, 2020's fire season has seen temperatures spike to historic highs, with a prolonged heat wave exacerbating fires at dozens of sites across the state. So far, over 300,000 acres have burned, with an estimated 11,000 lightning strikes over about 72 hours igniting 376 new wildfires, according to Cal Fire. " Firenados" are forming. More than 30,000 Californians are without power. Thousands more are under evacuation orders after Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Tuesday, mobilizing the state's National Guard.
Still, the blazes show little sign of slowing, fueled by persistent, record-breaking temperatures. The situation has become an "extraordinary unprecedented historic event," as Bay Area National Weather Service warning coordination meteorologist Brian Garcia told CNN - and an extremely dangerous one, particularly in the midst of a pandemic caused by a respiratory virus.
Here's what to know about the fires in California.
As of Wednesday, wildfires are burning at approximately 40 large sites statewide. The Southern part of the state is fighting blazes of its own, but the three largest fire complexes - a complex being, per the USDA Forest Service, "two or more individual incidents located in the same general area which are assigned to a single incident commander or unified command" - are in Northern California. Those are: The LNU Lightning Complex,encompassing at least six distinct fires that have scorched 46,000 acres and destroyed at least 50 structures across Napa, Sonoma, and Solano counties; the SCU Lightning Complex, comprising 20 fires that burned 85,000 acres and pose a threat to 1,400 houses in Santa Clara; and the CZU August Lightning Complex, which includes at least five firesthat have burned 10,000 acres and together threaten 6,000 houses in San Mateo and Santa Clara. Firefighters have also responded to the River and Carmel fire in Monterey County, the Loyalton Fire (the site of the " firenado "), and the Butte Lightning Complex, among others. State fire authorities have ordered mandatory evacuations for some residents of Santa Cruz, San Mateo, Napa, and Sonoma Counties.
One of the most serious situations developed outside Vacaville, in Solano County, overnight. Vacaville, a city of approximately 100,000 people, sits near the LNU Lightning Complex, which exploded in size between Tuesday and Wednesday. The New York reports that people fled their homes in the dark, as uncontrolled fires began consuming houses and other buildings on the outskirts of town. Many neighborhoods are now being evacuated.
Houses on fire at #Vacaville fire off Pleasants Valley Road. No firefighters able to handle #LightningComplex pic.twitter.com/izsnXrziTc
- Matthias Gafni (@mgafni) August 19, 2020
Per the Times, the SCU Lightning Complex "more than doubled in size overnight," with strong winds largely crushing the odds of containment. The rapid spread has also strained firefighters' limited resources, and now, Cal Fire has called for 375 fire engines from other states. Without naming a specific number, the Washington reports that "several firefighters" have now been injured while trying to extinguish the blazes.
Driving through Steele Canyon Rd during the #HennesseyFire in Napa County #FireWx @CAL_FIRE pic.twitter.com/KbA4jwRL3P
- Ethan Swope (@EthanSwopePhoto) August 19, 2020
RIVER FIRE TIMELAPSE: The River Fire lit up the night sky south of Salinas as it continued to grow. The fire grew to 2,800 acres Monday morning. #riverfire #calfire @cal_fire pic.twitter.com/DhBNxbLr2t
- KSBW Action News 8 (@ksbw) August 17, 2020
Fire Tornado today outside Chilcoot and Hallelujah Junction California. This was intense and scary!!!! @TheTXWXchaser @spahn711 @JimCantore @ReedTimmerAccu @jeffpiotrowski #CAwx #LoyaltonFire #firenado #FireSeason2020 pic.twitter.com/vfwrTKK02n
- Tasha Joy (@That1GirlTasha) August 16, 2020
A heat wave of historic proportions has been baking an estimated 50 million people in the West, with CBS reporting last week that about 150 record-high temps could be broken from Texas to Washington. On Sunday, Death Valley saw what may be the highest temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth. Not only did the extreme heat prime the region for wildfires, but the high temperatures have also exacerbated the blazes.
California has, for close to a week now, been mired in sweltering, triple-digit temps and suffocating humidity. A high-pressure system (in other words, a heat dome) has been stationed over California, Arizona, and Nevada, and according to the L.A. , it funneled scorching, dry air over California. Meanwhile, a thunderstorm in Mexico "sent an invisible rippling wave of uplifting pressure north through the atmosphere," creating the "historic lightning siege" - as Jeremy Rahn, a spokesman for Cal Fire, put it - now sparking fires in Northern California.
On Tuesday, Governor Gavin Newsom ordered a statewide state of emergency to deploy resources to help "combat fires burning across the state which have been exacerbated by the effects of the historic West Coast heat wave and sustained high winds." He has also obtained assistance grants from FEMA to aid fire response in Napa, Nevada, and Monterey County.
Governor @GavinNewsom today declared a statewide emergency to help ensure the availability of vital resources to combat fires burning across the state, which have been exacerbated by the effects of the historic West Coast heat wave & sustained high winds. https://t.co/29FT9lLd6p
- Office of the Governor of California (@CAgovernor) August 18, 2020
Over the weekend, the state saw rolling blackouts, with a quarter of a million people losing power on Friday and Saturday alone. On Tuesday, 2 million homes and businesses were at risk of rotating blackouts to ease strain on the power grid, although reduced demand ultimately negated need for such drastic measures.
As of Tuesday night, at least 37,000 people across the Golden State were without power, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) told CNN.
"Extreme heat and electricity demand has caused outages in parts of Los Angeles," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti wrote on Twitter.
While California's natural landscape evolved to undergo regular burns, as Natural Geographic reports, the steadily escalating severity of fire season is attributable to climate change. At three degrees Fahrenheit, California's warming rate over the past century is triple the global average, dramatically drying the vegetation and making it easier to ignite. Burn seasons get longer, pushing off and shortening autumn rains.
A recent study out of Stanford found that, since 1980, statewide temperatures rose about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit while precipitation fell by 30 percent, doubling the number of fall days when conditions were ripe for wildfires to ignite. "That's a really big increase over a relatively short period of time that can be attributed directly to the changes in climate," Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and one of the study's authors, told Scientific American. And "given that the climate will continue to warm somewhat more, no matter what we do," he added, "this risk is definitely going to get worse before it gets better."
As David Wallace-Wells reported at the outset of California's fire season last year, by 2050, warming could double - if not quadruple - the amount of U.S. land that burns annually. Which is to say, if the climate crisis continues unabated, extreme weather like this could become frighteningly close to the norm.
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