11 votes

Record heat, unprecedented lightning fire siege in Northern California; more dry lightning to come

2 comments

  1. rosco
    Link
    I cannot express just how depressed I am about these fires. I was camping in Monterey when the storm hit, returned to my home in San Jose only to be evacuated up to Tahoe, where thick smoke has...

    I cannot express just how depressed I am about these fires. I was camping in Monterey when the storm hit, returned to my home in San Jose only to be evacuated up to Tahoe, where thick smoke has been choking everything out. My favorite climbing crag, Castle Rock, is likely to burn, the state parks containing some of my favorite places: Big Basin, Henry Cowell, and Point Reyes are all burning. My landlords house has burned down, 80% of my friends have evacuated to their parents homes, my alma mater is likely to burn or partially burn. And with all of this, Trump is playing stick and carrot with fucking aid and federal support.

    10 votes
  2. skybrian
    (edited )
    Link
    From the blog post from Weather West: [....] [...] [...]

    From the blog post from Weather West:

    [On August 16], many places saw 40-50 mph gusts, but there were a few places that logged winds of 65-75 mph as these powerful storms moved ashore. Much of the SF Bay Area was under a multi-hour Severe Thunderstorm Warning by the NWS for the first time I can remember. Multiple places also experienced Midwest-style convective “heat bursts”–in which rapid collapse of thunderstorm updrafts caused air parcels aloft to plunge to the surface and warm to extreme levels. (Travis Air Force Base, for example, dramatically rose from 80F to 100F just before sunrise amid lightning and strong winds.)

    [....]

    By the time this post is published, around 800,000 acres of land will have burned over the past 8 days in California–over 700,000 of which in the northern part of the state, and about 500,000 within 100 miles of San Francisco. For perspective: less than 250,000 acres burned in California in all of 2019. There are so many fires right now that multiple wildfires under 5,000 acres have gone largely unattended, and unmentioned in the media. CalFire stated earlier today that to fight these fires to the maximum of their ability, the agency would [need] nearly 10 times more firefighting resources than are available.

    [...]

    Two individual fire complexes–the LNU and SCU Lightning Complexes–will each have burned around a quarter million acres by tonight or tomorrow (both are currently above well above 200,000 acres). Most of the fires within each complex have already merged together, or will shortly. Both of these fires complexes are already among the top 10 largest California fires on record, are still spreading, and have little containment.

    [...]

    While I think, at this time, that it’s unlikely that this event will be quite as intense as last weekend’s, it does bear some similarity. I do expect substantially more than just isolated dry thunderstorms–overall lightning coverage may be scattered to widespread, with only isolated/brief showers. This (mostly) dry lightning, if it occurs, will likely ignite new fires at a time when available firefighting resources are extremely limited. Very gusty downdraft winds are also possible–which could be very dangerous near existing fires and cause locally extreme fire behavior and sudden flare-ups in any direction. For this reason, the National Weather Service has issued a Fire Weather Watch for much of northern California.

    2 votes