By Angela Fritz, Chad Myers and Ella Nilsen, CNN
California meteorologists told CNN Thursday that they were surprised at how quickly The devastating Orange County wildfire it moved overnight as it tore through the city of Laguna Niguel and destroyed at least 20 multi-million dollar homes and mansions.
“It’s too early” for a fire like that in Southern California, said Bill South, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford. “This has the potential to be a very bad fire season. And as everyone knows, we are in a drought here in the entire state of California.”
extreme drought expanded from covering 40% of the state to 60% of the state in the last week alone, the US drought monitor reported Thursday, and January through April were the first four driest months on record in California.
Winter and spring are typically California’s wet seasons, but this year has been anything but, especially in the southern half of the state. Los Angeles and Palm Springs have had their third and second driest starts to the year, respectively. Records in this region go back more than 70 years.
“We haven’t seen a drop of rain,” South said.
Without much-needed rain, vegetation in Orange County has dried to a crisp, fueling Wednesday night’s fast-moving coastal fire. Forecasters told CNN the winds weren’t even particularly strong.
“I could have called it windy,” South said. “But it wasn’t the typical Santa Ana situation where they would get strong easterly winds like they usually do, causing fires to spread rapidly in Southern California.”
In fact, the winds that helped spread the fire were blowing off the Pacific Ocean, meaning they were cool and moist.
“The humidity was high, which is not necessarily optimal to achieve that type of burning,” said Greg Martin, a meteorologist with NWS San Diego. “I was really shocked when I saw the plume of smoke last night on my trip and wondered what was burning.
“That was not what I would have thought would be an ideal situation, and yet we had a substantial fire.”
Scientists recently reported that the multi-year mega-drought in the West is the most extreme in 1,200 years, and has worsened by 72% due to human-caused climate change. Reservoirs in California, Nevada and Arizona, sources of water for tens of millions of people, are rapidly depleting after a dry winter.
Wildfires have historically peaked in the late summer and fall in California. But now, instead of a fire season, officials are increasingly pointing to a “fire year,” where wildfires occur in any given month.
“We’ve stopped talking about fire seasons,” Issac Sanchez, communications chief for the Cal Fire battalion, told CNN. “The implication of that term is that if we’re in fire season, there’s a time of year that we’re not in fire season. That is no longer the case in California.”
While Sanchez said Wednesday’s fire is “historically speaking, unusual,” it’s not even the first unusual fire this year. In January, the red fire burned 687 acres in Monterey County.
“It is the result of climate change, it is the result of the drought that we are seeing,” Sánchez said. “The Coastal Fire is a graphic example that you don’t need to burn thousands of acres to impact yourself.”
Sanchez added that unless the prolonged drought and dry conditions in the state improve, and do so steadily for years, California fire crews will continue to prepare for a worst-case scenario.
“We are preparing for the worst,” he said. “We have to be prepared for the worst, there is no hope that things will get better.”
As firefighters battled the blaze early Thursday morning, Orange County Fire Chief Brian Fennessy pointed out how different this was from what they had encountered in the past.
“The fuel beds in this county, throughout Southern California, throughout the West, are so dry that a fire like this is going to be more common,” he said. “Five years ago, 10 years ago, a fire like this would probably have stopped very small.”
The CNN Wire
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