More than a month and a half into this year’s rainy season and significant precipitation was finally falling on Tuesday in Northern California. The state could use it in more ways than one.
On Aug. 3, researchers at the Plumas National Forest in Northern California received a startling result: Sticks and logs they gathered from the forest floor to assess wildfire risk had a moisture level of just 2%. The reading was the lowest ever recorded in 15 years of measurements at a site in the forest’s southwest corner. It also was a warning: The area was tinderbox-dry and primed to burn.
After months of devastating wildfires and waiting desperately for the upcoming wet winter season to bring relief, some communities in California are now at high risk of potentially deadly mudslides.
The fires burned thousands of square miles of land and left scorched and barren hillsides vulnerable to an especially dangerous fast-moving type of landslide that scientists call “debris flow.” Known less formally as mudslides, these flows are typically triggered by short, intense storms and can send tides of soil, ash, vegetation, rocks and even cars and homes careening downhill, destroying everything in their path.
Hot, dry conditions and intense winds across California are threatening to reinvigorate what has already been the worst fire season in state history, officials warned on Tuesday. Gusty winds in California’s north and extreme heat in its south are creating conditions that could fan wildfires that began earlier in the summer as well as spark new ones, leading state and federal authorities to urge residents to prepare.
The CZU Lightning Complex Fire’s threat to water quality in Santa Cruz came into sharper focus Tuesday as a Cal Fire emergency watershed response team neared completion of a damage study.
The most pressing risk is debris that could clog the San Lorenzo River near River Street and Highway 1 where water enters the city’s system, said Santa Cruz Water Director Rosemary Menard. The San Lorenzo River is the city’s largest water source. It represents about 45% of the water supply.
Rosa Villegas woke up at two in the morning on a late August Monday to make her way to the lettuce fields in California’s south Salinas Valley, where she was scheduled to start bagging heads of romaine at 4 a.m. The sky overhead wasn’t its usual dark, star-dotted self as she walked to her car. Instead, it glowed a sickly red, colored by the fires burning on the flanks of the Santa Lucia mountains, just a few miles west.
Mayor Kevin Faulconer joined San Diego Fire Chief Colin Stowell and Councilman Chris Cate Wednesday to urge residents to stay on high alert, get prepared and stay informed, citing the historic lightning-sparked fires raging in northern California in stressing the need to be vigilant.
On a cool February morning, around 60 people gathered in the Sierra Nevada foothills to take part in a ceremony that, for many decades, was banned.
Men and women from Native American tribes in Northern California stood in a circle, alongside university students and locals from around the town of Mariposa. Several wore bright yellow shirts made of flame-resistant fabric. For the next two days, the group would be carefully lighting fires in the surrounding hills.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a statewide emergency in order to help California respond to the fires burning across the state amid an extreme heat wave that brought more warnings about power outages on Tuesday.
On Monday, California fire officials gathered to launch the state’s annual Wildfire Preparedness Week. The message they delivered was clear: Summer 2020 would not mimic summer 2019, when wildfires mostly remained small and manageable into August.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
