Heatwaves Raising California’s Wildfire Risk
The current heatwave broiling Californians like no event in decades is also elevating the risk for another potential disaster in the weeks ahead: wildfires.
While heat and dry conditions have contributed to the Lake and Ranch fires burning now in Los Angeles County, fear of larger blazes looms in the weeks ahead. As a result of climate change, California sees more than twice as many fall days with “fire weather” as it did a generation ago. The current heatwave raises the odds of “wildfires later in 2020, that’s for sure,” says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.