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Opinion: When Flooding Season Runs Into Fire Season

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Michael Smolens

The state’s first notable wildfire of the year broke out a week ago in the San Bernardino National Forest, signaling the start of the fire season and creating an odd juxtaposition.

At about the same time, some 300 miles to the north, Yosemite National Park announced it was temporarily closing because of the threat from anticipated melting of the vast Sierra snowpack.

California, which has been battered by extreme weather for some time, is used to being whipsawed by the elements — though not quite like this past year.

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Why California Can’t Catch a Break

/in , , /by /The Atlanticby Caroline Mimbs Nyce

This winter, storm after storm after storm dumped rain and snow on California, and now, as the spring poppies bloom, the state is lush. Hillsides once prickly with dry vegetation have softened. Ski resorts, once thawed out and closed by late spring, are buried under record snow and planning to stay open into July. Satellite photos show a state transformed from brown to green, streaked from top to bottom with bright-emerald patches.

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As West Burns, House Passes Major Drought and Wildfire Resilience Package

/in , /by /Gristby Emily Pontecorvo

The Western U.S. saw wildfire season kick into high gear last week. As firefighting crews made progress toward containing a blaze in Yosemite National Park in California, another fire erupted near the Oregon border and quickly became the largest California wildfire of the year. Flames also tore through tens of thousands of acres in northern Montana and eastern Idaho.

On the other side of the country, in swampy but fire-free Washington, D.C., Democratic lawmakers were feeling the heat.

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Vice President Kamala Harris to Announce $1 Billion to States for Floods, Extreme Heat

/in , , /by /CNBC

The White House is making more than $1 billion available to states to address flooding and extreme heat exacerbated by climate change.

Vice President Kamala Harris is set to announce the grant programs Monday at an event in Miami with the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other officials. The competitive grants will help communities across the nation prepare for and respond to climate-related disasters.

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California’s 2022 Wildfire Season is Off to a Relatively Tame Start. Will It Last?

/in , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Michael McGough

Blazes have burned thousands of acres, cued mandatory evacuations and threatened some of the state’s oldest and most impressive trees, but far fewer acres have burned in California wildfires through the first few weeks of summer than at the same point last year.

The tides may turn in the coming weeks as conditions stay hot and grow drier, but the numbers to date suggest the state may have averted a particularly nasty start to this wildfire season.

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How Much Rain Does California Need to Get Out of the Drought? A Lot Still

/in , , /by /AccuWeatherby Zachary Rosenthal

If you flashback to October, it might seem hard to believe that California’s Sierra Nevada would be experiencing a below-normal snowpack at this point of the winter. During October, the region was regularly pummeled with atmospheric rivers and major winter storms, with those storms dropping feet of snow in the mountains.

But as of early February, despite that strong start, the region has had its driest period of winter in recorded history. It has been more than 32 days and counting since the last snowfall at the U.C. Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab, breaking the previous record of 31 set in 1990.

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Colorado Had Hottest Six Months in History, New Data Shows

/in , , /by /The Denver Postby Conrad Swanson

The average temperature for the last six months is the hottest recorded in Colorado and the country as a whole, according to data released this week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The next-highest six-month average temperature peak in Colorado came during the 1930s Dust Bowl era, the data shows.

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Southern California Spared Major Fires as Storms End an Unprecedented Season

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Alex Wigglesworth

The storms pounding California this week are expected to bring an end to a wildfire season that shocked fire crews with its unprecedented, climate-change-driven behavior.

For the first time ever, wildfires burned from one side of the Sierra Nevada to the other, destroying multiple towns including the Gold Rush-era community of Greenville and the mountain hamlet of Grizzly Flats.

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Third-Driest Year Reported in California

/in , , /by /The Hillby Celine Castronuovo

The California Department of Water Resources has marked 2021 as the third-driest water year, a period marked from October to March, on record for the Golden State, potentially setting up another deadly wildfire season after last year’s record setting blazes.

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Billion-Dollar Disasters: The Costs, in Lives and Dollars, Have Never Been So High

/in , , /by /Inside Climate Newsby Judy Fahys

Extreme weather will surely have its own chapter in the turbulent history of 2020. The human and economic toll of Covid-19 was already enormous this fall, when it became clear that 2020 was on track to break the previous record for big weather disasters, fueled in part by climate change. From the derecho that battered the Midwest with hurricane-force winds to unprecedented wildfires that scorched more than 700,000 acres in Colorado and gave California its worst fire season in history, weather and climate events like these represented only a few line items in the latest tally of the nation’s billion-dollar disasters.

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