While dry events in California are not getting drier, extreme wet weather events have steadily increased in magnitude since the middle of the last century, new research shows.

These increased extreme wet events can result in more dangerous flooding and also fuel wildfires.

“Most research after 2015 has been very focused on this climate variability and how it’s going to get worse in the future,” says Diana Zamora-Reyes, a graduate student in the department of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona and lead author of the paper in the International Journal of Climatology.