Wildfires have been raging across California, ripping through wildlands as well as cities, towns and rural neighborhoods, forcing thousands of residents to flee amid a heatwave and the coronavirus pandemic. The blazes have blackened skies, spewing smoke across the Bay Area and sprinkling ash across the region this week. Sparked by a rare lightning storm and stoked by hot, windy weather, the fires have expanded quickly into the Sierra Nevada, southern California, and regions north, east and south of San Francisco. Fire crews have been stretched thin, and Governor Gavin Newsom appealed to the whole country to help send personnel and equipment: “We are challenged right now.”Here’s what you need to know about the crisis. A confluence of extreme weather conditions set the stage, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. First came a record-breaking, continuing heatwave across the state. Temperatures in Death Valley hit 130F and the state saw rolling blackouts for the first time in nearly two decades as millions of Californians seeking to cool their homes strained the electrical grid. Next, a tropical storm in the Pacific Ocean spun moisture toward California, triggering a rare lighting storm that zapped California more than 10,800 times over a three-day period, sparking small fires across the Bay Area and northern California. Then the humidity dropped and winds picked up, stoking the small flames until they erupted into full-blown infernos. On Saturday, one of the wildfires in northern California spawned a fire tornado – a 30,000ft smoky swirl that frizzled with lightning, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a first-of-its-kind weather alert. The firenado died down, but many fires peppered across the state continued to expand. “Some of these fires started to merge, feeding off each others’ energy and growing even faster,” said Scott Stephens, a fire scientist at UC Berkeley. “Now many of these fires are changing behaviors and burning so quickly. It scares me because just so many people are in harm’s way.”Quite the opposite. “It’s hard to even process,” Swain said. The lighting storms that started the fires were an odd occurrence in the Bay Area – and the blazes they created are especially tricky to fight.



All data is taken from the source: https://www.theguardian.com/
Article Link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/21/california-wildfires-explained-q-and-a-weather-smoke


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