'This is just the beginning': how long the California fire season will last

One of the last fires that broke out in Southern California, Maria Fire, burned almost 4 10 acres (000 ha) of land in 4046 days, and received the title of the largest fire in the south of the state. Experts say that this can only be the beginning of the fire season and will continue to be worse. Writes about it Los Angeles Times.

Фото: Depositphotos

A report from the National Inter-Agency Fire Center predicts a higher-than-usual likelihood of other major fires in Southern California during December, noting that the rainy season may arrive very late in 2019. In the northern part of the state, fires are also possible during November.

“It will be a long fall in California for both firefighters and the general public in terms of dealing with wildfire threats,” the report said. “The best thing citizens can do is to be wise.” Now is the time to prepare for wildfires and have a plan in place should the fires reach you.”

“Forecasting how severe the California fire season might be largely comes down to a race between the start of the rainy season and the Santa Ana winds,” said Bill Patzert, a former NASA laboratory climate scientist.

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According to him, good rain throughout the state will significantly slow down the fire season, even in conditions of strong winds. However, there was no significant rain in Southern California for seven months, and meteorologists say there is no clear sign of rain anywhere in the forecast until at least mid-November.

Typically, October sees about six days of Santa Ana wind conditions, while November sees nine, and December and January see 10 and 11, respectively. Diablo winds occur most often in October.

“The fire danger has not decreased at all. In some ways, this is really the beginning of the beginning,” Patzert said. “Everything points to larger fires if the rain doesn’t come.”

Strong winds in October also resulted in extremely dry air, causing much of the state's vegetation to reach near-critical levels of dryness. Several regions — including the southern Sierra Nevada, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Sacramento Valley and a large swath of the Southern California coast — reached extremely dry levels.

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Dry plants became fuel for fires, even the smallest spark in such conditions instantly turns into an all-consuming fire.

“Californians think the state is in a drought and are using water sparingly,” said Mike Mohler, deputy director of the California Department of Fire Protection and Forestry.

Experts claim that the winds of Santa Ana and Diablo have been part of California's ecology since prehistoric times. But the risk of fire in populated areas has increased as people build houses more and more and move to wild lands, especially those subject to fires.

In Southern California, more and more people live in Santa Ana's wind corridors, such as the Santa Clara Valley in Ventura County, south of the Cajon Pass in the Inland Empire and west of the San Gorgonio Pass east of Riverside.

In Northern California, North Bay residents living in homes built since the 1980's were shocked to find that they were at risk of fires emanating from coal emanating from the mountains to the northeast, although such fires had not occurred in previous decades. held in the region. Henley's fire in 1964 followed an almost identical path with Tabbs 'fire in 2017, but since there were so many more people living in 2017, Tabbs' fire became California's second most devastating forest fire.

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“We've built houses in a lot of places that shouldn't have been built - but we continue to do so. And it has to stop,” said environmentalist Hugh Safford.

Now all efforts are aimed at avoiding fire whenever possible and quickly evacuating people in the event of a fire.

“If you get a hurricane warning, you're not going to sit back and wait to see what happens. You pack up and leave,” Mohler said. “The same thing needs to be done in California, if not, then you will most likely burn out.”

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