5 of the 6 largest California wildfires in history started in the past 6 weeks

The staggering statistics keep piling up for California’s wildfire season: August and September account for five of the six biggest fires in nearly 90 years of recorded history for the state.

The destructive Creek Fire that continues to burn in Fresno County grew about 3,000 acres between Monday and Tuesday for a new total of 283,724 acres, leapfrogging the 2017 Thomas Fire for the No. 6 spot, according to Cal Fire records. It is 30% contained.

Ahead of the Creek Fire, which started Sept. 4, are four massive wildfire complexes that sparked during a freak mid-August thunderstorm. The storm pummeled Northern California and the Bay Area with thousands of lightning strikes, igniting dozens of large fires and hundreds of smaller ones. Then, gusty winds within the next few weeks caused some of the larger incidents to swell or erupt in size.

The 2018 Mendocino Complex had previously been the state’s largest fire on record, reaching 459,123 acres. Until 2020, it was the only wildfire to eclipse 300,000 acres, dating back to the start of reliable record keeping in 1932.

The Mendocino Complex is now the second-biggest in state history, behind the 847,000-acre August Complex burning with just 38% containment near Mendocino National Forest as of Tuesday morning, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

Two of the 2020 behemoths, the SCU Lightning Complex (No. 3 at 396,624 acres) and the LNU Lightning Complex (No. 4, 363,220 acres) in the South and North Bay areas, respectively, are almost fully contained. Early last week, Cal Fire reported each at 98% containment and said fire activity had ceased and stopped issuing daily incident reports.

Rounding out the all-time list at No. 5 is the North Complex burning in parts of Butte, Plumas and Yuba counties, which reached 299,723 acres as of Tuesday morning updates from Cal Fire and the Forest Service. At least 15 people have died in the North Complex, which ties it for the fifth-deadliest wildfire in California history.

Those five fires that have started in the past six weeks have burned nearly 2.4 million combined acres — an area of about 3,750 square miles, which is more than triple the size of Rhode Island.

They’re among more than 7,800 major and minor wildfire incidents that have sparked this year, combining for nearly 3.4 million acres — the most ever in a calendar year — as of mid-September, according to the Cal Fire website. About 1.4 million of those acres have burned in jurisdiction handled by Cal Fire, with the remaining 2 million in U.S. Forest Service territory.

Recent major wildfires also include four of the state’s Top 20 in history in terms of destruction. The North Complex has destroyed more than 2,050 buildings, which ranks it No. 5. The LNU Complex and the CZU Lightning Complex, which sparked last month in Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties, are virtually tied at No. 10, each destroying about 1,490 structures. And the Creek Fire, burning for less than three weeks, has destroyed at least 855.

Will autumn be even worse?

In a column published by the San Luis Obispo Tribune on Tuesday, the first official day of fall, PG&E Diablo Canyon meteorologist John Lindsey predicted that the change of season could bring even worse, more destructive wildfires to California than the summer did.

He explained his reasoning:

“In the fall, high pressure often builds over the Great Basin, the space between the Sierra Nevada range to the west and the Rocky Mountains to the east,” Lindsey wrote. “This condition can produce north to northeasterly katabatic, or, downslope winds.

“These gales can bring dry and heated air that blows across bone-dry vegetation and trees that have not seen rainfall in months, a typical fall California condition before the rainy season’s first significant showers arrives.”

Climate change and California wildfires

Wildfires have always been part of life in California. The past four years have brought some of the most destructive and deadliest wildfires in the state’s modern history.

Nearly 180 people have lost their lives since 2017. More than 41,000 structures have been destroyed and nearly 7 million acres have burned – that’s roughly the size of Massachusetts.

So far this year, 26 people have died, according to Cal Fire.

Meanwhile, this year’s August was the hottest on record in California. A rare series of lightning storms sparked a series of fires, including the August Complex that has burned roughly 840,000 acres, making it the largest wildfire in California’s recorded history.

Our climate is becoming more severe.

The 2017 wildfire season occurred during the second hottest year on record in California and included a devastating string of fires in October that killed 44 people and destroyed nearly 9,000 buildings in Napa, Lake, Sonoma, Mendocino, Butte and Solano counties.

The following year was the most destructive and deadliest for wildfires in the state’s history. It included the Camp Fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people, and the enormous Mendocino Complex.

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