CNN
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Wildfire activity in California has been notably low this year, experts tell CNN, particularly compared to 2020 and 2021 when devastating wildfires erupted across the state and burned millions of acres by the time summer ended.
California has had several severe fires this year, including the Mosquito Fire, which continues to burn east of Sacramento.
However, after damp spring weather and cool temperatures delayed the onset of peak fire activity, the state’s overall wildfire activity has been “surprisingly benign,” said Craig Clements, director of San Jose State University’s Fire Weather Lab.
“But we’re not out of the woods yet,” Clements told CNN. Hot and dry offshore winds, often referred to as the Diablo or Santa Ana winds, can trigger an enormous wildfire threat, and the wind phenomena do not tend to start until the fall and winter.
“If we get those big offshore wind events in Southern California like the Santa Anas, the Diablo winds in Northern California, those could lead to bigger fires,” he said.
According to Cal Fire Battalion Chief Jon Heggie, wildfires have burned around 365,000 acres so far this year in California, which is well below the year-to-date acreage burned in recent years. In 2021, more than 2.5 million acres had burned through August, while 4.3 million acres had burned in 2020.
Heggie called this year’s burned acreage a “dramatic” drop from previous years.
Yet California remains in a multiyear megadrought which has drained water supplies and primed the vegetation for landscape-altering wildfires. Drought conditions are present in 99% of the state, according to the US Drought Monitor; conditions scientists say are part of the reason California has seen an uptick in fire activity in recent years.
Clements pointed to three things contributing to this year’s below-average fire activity: luck, firefighting strategies and day-to-day weather.
Spring brought favorable weather with cooler temperatures and some precipitation, but summer brought hotter and drier weather. California saw one of its worst September heat waves on record earlier this month, which stoked the state’s current active fires, including the Mosquito Fire which has burned more than 76,000 acres and has become the largest in the state so far this year, according to CalFire.
“While climate change has its fingerprints all over these larger fires, it’s day-to-day weather that drives fire behavior,” he said.
Photos: The West’s historic drought
Caitlin Ochs/Reuters
Oak Fire, which started near Yosemite National Park, burned nearly 20,000 acres and is California’s biggest wildfire of the year. The challenging terrain and abundant dry vegetation fueling the wildfire complicated efforts to tamp down its growth, a Cal Fire spokesperson told CNN.” class=”gallery-image__dam-img” height=”1663″/>Photos: The West’s historic drought
Noah Berger/AP
Photos: The West’s historic drought
John Locher/AP
Craig Miller sits in his stranded houseboat at Lake Mead near Boulder City, Nevada, on June 23. Miller had been living on the stranded boat for over two weeks after engine trouble and falling lake levels left the boat above the water level.
The May 11 brush fire was fueled by windy and dry conditions amid California’s severe drought, which has been compounded by climate change. Flames raced up the hill to reach the multimillion-dollar houses after the fire started below in a nearby canyon.” class=”gallery-image__dam-img” height=”1629″/>Photos: The West’s historic drought
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Photos: The West’s historic drought
Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Firefighters battle a brush fire at Coronado Pointe in Laguna Niguel, California, on May 11. Statewide, January to April were the driest first four months on record, the US Drought Monitor reported.
Tier 2 shortage starting in 2023.” class=”gallery-image__dam-img” height=”1667″/>Photos: The West’s historic drought
John Locher/AP
Photos: The West’s historic drought
Mario Tama/Getty Images
A dead fish lies on a section of dry lakebed along Lake Mead on May 9.
multi-billion-dollar plan to preserve the state’s diminishing water supply for future years, which includes recycled water projects such as desalination of ocean water and salty water in groundwater basins.” class=”gallery-image__dam-img” height=”1667″/>Photos: The West’s historic drought
Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Photos: The West’s historic drought
Joe Buglewicz/The New York Times/Redux
A landscaping crew removes non-functional turf from a residential development in Las Vegas on March 30. Under a Nevada state law passed last year, patches of non-functional grass that serve only for aesthetic purposes must be removed in favor of more desert-friendly landscaping.
Photos: The West’s historic drought
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
People walk on an area of Lake Powell that used to be underwater at Lone Rock Beach in Big Water, Utah, on March 27.
shrinking Great Salt Lake is seen from Antelope Island State Park in Utah on March 15. Human water consumption and diversion have long depleted the lake. Scientists worry they’re watching a slow-motion calamity unfold. Ten million birds flock to the Great Salt Lake each year to feed off of its now-struggling sea life, and more pelicans breed here than almost anywhere else in the country.” class=”gallery-image__dam-img” height=”1667″/>Photos: The West’s historic drought
Bryan Tarnowski/The New York Times/Redux
Photos: The West’s historic drought
NOAA
In this GeoColor image from July 2021, smoke from numerous wildfires could be seen as gray-brown, in stark contrast to the white cloud cover over other parts of the continent.
it hit 130 degrees Fahrenheit for only the fifth time in recorded history.” class=”gallery-image__dam-img” height=”2001″/>Photos: The West’s historic drought
Roger Kisby/The New York Times/Redux
Photos: The West’s historic drought
David McNew/Getty Images
These peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, near Lone Pine, California, often have snow packs that last throughout the summer months. But there were none in July 2021.
Photos: The West’s historic drought
John Locher/AP
Golden Davis cools off in a mister along the Las Vegas Strip on July 9, 2021. The city tied its all-time temperature record of 117 degrees Fahrenheit over the weekend.
Photos: The West’s historic drought
Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
A utility crew works on power lines in July 2021, in front of a hillside that was burned by the Salt Fire in California’s Shasta County.
Photos: The West’s historic drought
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Annette Garcia, director of the Coachella Valley Horse Rescue, straps ice packs onto a horse’s legs to help keep him cool amid a water shortage in Indio, California, in July 2021.
Photos: The West’s historic drought
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
This aerial photo shows houseboats anchored at the Bidwell Canyon Marina in Oroville, California, in June 2021. As water levels continued to fall at Lake Oroville, officials were flagging houseboats for removal so they could avoid being stuck or damaged.
set an all-time high of 112 degrees that day. It surpassed it a day later with a high of 116.” class=”gallery-image__dam-img” height=”1667″/>Photos: The West’s historic drought
Nathan Howard/Getty Images
Photos: The West’s historic drought
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Park visitors in Big Water, Utah, walk on an area of Lake Powell that used to be underwater at Lone Rock Beach in June 2021.
Photos: The West’s historic drought
Mario Tama/Getty Images
The exposed lake bed of the San Gabriel Reservoir is seen near Azusa, California, in June 2021.
Photos: The West’s historic drought
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Ranchers Jim Jensen, center, and Bill Jensen inspect a trench they are working on to try to get more water to their ranch in Tomales, California, in June 2021. As the drought continues in California, many ranchers and farmers are beginning to see their wells and ponds dry up. They are having to make modifications to their existing water resources or have water trucked in for their livestock.
Photos: The West’s historic drought
Will Matsuda/The New York Times/Redux
California’s Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge, near the Oregon border, is seen in May 2021. The area has been severely affected by drought and the lack of irrigation waters from Upper Klamath Lake, which usually feeds into the refuge.
Photos: The West’s historic drought
AP
Firefighters battle a brushfire in Santa Barbara, California, in May 2021.
Photos: The West’s historic drought
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
This aerial photo shows rows of almond trees sitting on the ground during an orchard removal project in Snelling, California, in May 2021. Because of a shortage of water in the Central Valley, some farmers are having to remove crops that require excessive watering.
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California in Los Angeles, noted although less acreage has burned so far this year, individual wildfires have been quite deadly and destructive. This year’s fires have killed nine people and destroyed more than 800 structures, according to Cal Fire.
“When people talk about this, they’re often talking about the acreage burned and actually not only does it not tell the whole story, but it arguably doesn’t tell most of what’s important about why we care about wildfires in a societal context,” Swain told CNN. “Just because the acreage burned has been less than in recent years, the impacts of these fires have actually still been really high.”
And while the acres burned are lower than the last five years, Heggie said fire conditions in California can change quickly as the seasons transition.
“It can change very rapidly in California, and so even though we are starting to think about that as a transition time, we’re still remaining ever-vigilant, and we encourage the public to do the same as well,” Heggie said.
Janice Coen, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told CNN despite the summer’s high heat and dry conditions, the reason there has not been a major outbreak of fires people out West would expect, is because not all conditions have been present at the same time.
“Even though there have been plenty of ignitions across the country, there hasn’t been the alignment of conditions to allow very many of them to grow large,” Coen told CNN. “It is possible that things will change. We’re heading into a period when a different type of fire is likely, so we may see more activity in Southern California than we have” so far.
Human-caused climate change has played a role in making extreme fire events worse and more likely to happen. The West’s drought and extreme heat waves laid the groundwork for dozens of major wildfires in recent years. However, just because the climate crisis is accelerating, experts say there is still year-to-year variability.
According to the National Interagency Fire Center, the potential for large fires to spark in California will remain low for the rest of the week due to above-average vegetation moisture due in part to recent rainfall, including from Hurricane Kay.
Swain said individual rain events will not erase the deeply-rooted drought, but they do help ease fire conditions in the near term.
“This is one of those weather patterns where it’s kind of boom or bust,” Swain said of the rainfall. “We get a decent amount of rain, or we probably get nothing at all, so fingers are crossed, but it’s been kind of a weird year.”