Drought conditions throughout the state, and changes to the climate in recent years, have set the stage for this year’s California fire season to be a dangerous one.

Residents, businesses and homeowners are being urged to prepare for an increased risk of fire damage this year.

Research Points to Extended Season

A study recently led by Stanford University says changes to the California climate have made autumn “feel more like summer, with hotter, drier weather that increases the risk of longer, more dangerous wildfire seasons,” according to report on Stanford’s news website.

Specifically, the study found “long-term warming, coupled with decreasing autumn precipitation, is already increasing the odds of the kinds of extreme fire weather conditions that have proved so destructive in both northern and southern California in recent years,” the report quotes the study’s senior author, Noah Diffenbaugh, as saying.

Weather Conditions a Contributing Factor

Added to the general climate changes is the fact that California experienced a historically dry winter. Less rain fell in the state than another year for which records have been kept, and some places, like Sacramento and San Francisco, didn’t have any rain at all. February is usually one of the wettest months in California.

By the end of May, the whole northern half of the state was considered in a drier than normal condition with a significant portion of northwestern California in an extreme to severe drought, according to information released by The National Drought Mitigation Center.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles, told NBC news last month that recent heat waves are already drying out the landscape. “Trees and plants are already so parched they have the look of mid-summer vegetation,” Swain said in the article on NBC news.

Swain, who co-authored the Stanford study on climate change and wildfire risk, told NBC temperatures “are likely to remain higher for longer, perhaps extending the fire season until Thanksgiving,” the article says.

Forecasts are Concerning

The National Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook, which is based on the cumulative forecasts of the Geographic Area Predictive Services units and the National Predictive Services unit of the National Interagency Fire Center, also says there is an above normal significant large fire potential across Northern California this year.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, CalFire, says more than 1,708 wildfires were recorded from the beginning of January to end of May – that’s 700 more fires than during the same period last year.

Amid all the talk about the increased risk of fires is the ongoing national Covid-19 crisis, which some health experts have said could balloon again in the fall, just in time for the traditional start of California’s wildfire season.

In a resurgence of the coronavirus, first responders, and firefighters in particular, will be under increased stress. Not only could firefighters themselves be sidelined with the virus, social distancing measures could hamper the ability of fire and safety officials to prepare for and organize their response to wildfires.

KQED-FM in California reported in April on the possible double threat.

“The thing about fire suppression is it’s an activity where you’re frankly just right on top of people,” the station quoted Scott Stephens, a fire science researcher at UC Berkeley, as saying. The firefighters work in crews and those crews live and train together in close quarters.

Evacuations would also be exponentially more complicated, especially where inpatient medical and care facilities are concerned.

The National Interagency Fire Center is drafting plans for how federal agencies, like the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, could best fight fires during a Covid-19 outbreak, KQED reported.

This article is not legal advice. It is presented
for informational purposes only.