As the Labor Day holiday weekend draws the summer to a close, it’s been an unusually quiet season for fires across the American west. Roughly 80,000 hectares (2m acres) have burned across the country so far, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), roughly 61% less than the 10-year average for this time of year. The decrease has been particularly pronounced in the fire-prone west, which has grown accustomed to seeing swaths of their parched forests and browning hillsides ignite but has largely been given a reprieve from a summer of smoke-filled skies. … Well-timed storms, including the unusual Tropical Storm Hilary, doused southern California and other dry areas nearby, staving off fire dangers that typically rise at the end of summer and into autumn.

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