California’s wildfires burning far more land this year than in 2023
So far in this year’s California’s wildfire season, about 20 times more acres of land have burned than around this time last year. Since the beginning of the year, there were more than 3,500 wildfires across the state through early July, causing about 207,000 acres of land to burn. Around this time last year, about 10,000 acres had burned. The five-year average of acres burned through mid-July is about 39,000, Cal Fire said last week. “We are not just in a fire season, but we are in a fire year,” Joe Tyler, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), said at a news conference earlier in July. … In hot, dry and windy conditions, as has been the case in California, sparks can ignite into flames. Gov. Gavin Newsom additionally cited record high temperatures and lightning strikes as the source of some of the fires. “Climate change is real … If you don’t believe in science, you have to believe your own eyes, the lived experience all of us have out here in the western United States, for that matter, all around the globe,” he said.
Related article:
- Los Angeles Times: Fires in Southern California Burn 30,000 Acres and Force Evacuations