California’s wildfire season is off to its worst start in 10 years.
From the Oregon border to Napa County, Santa Barbara to San Diego, thousands of firefighters with helicopters, bulldozers and air tankers are battling hot temperatures and windy conditions at a time when, most years, summer fire season has barely begun.
Add to all that dead vegetation difficult local conditions, and the fact that the winter of 2017-2018 was drier than normal in much of the state, leaving the moisture levels of plants, shrubs and trees dangerously low.
“I can say it’s the most significant fire behavior across the state that we’ve ever seen,” Brunton said.
“Whatever the reason may be we’re seeing a lot of dry fuels and weather that contributed to rates of spread when a fire starts.”
“We typically do not see this kind of fire behavior this time of year.
That blaze, at 35,250 acres, has crossed into Oregon and was just 30 percent contained Monday afternoon, having burned 81 structures with 800 still at risk.
And the 2003 Cedar fire, which killed 15 people and burned 273,000 acres in San Diego County, also burned that month.
Last year at this time, only 68,647 acres had burned in California — barely one-third of this year’s total so far.
The Wine Country fires in Napa and Sonoma counties were followed in December by the Thomas fire, which burned 281,063 acres in Santa Barbara County — making it the largest wildfire in state history — before mudslides in the burned area killed 21 people the following month.