Big wildfires burning in California heatwave; this one on the border with Nevada.
Same (Loyalton) fire
Loyalton Fire now creating tornado with wind speeds over 60 mph = 96 km/h. Via @HansKiesewetter
Four major wildfires burning in Colorado, already covering hundreds of km², and still largely uncontained. cpr.org/2020/08/15/col…
Over the past 2 days, rare summer lightning storms have sparked numerous new wildfires in N-California.
And in there ongoing heatwave, these quickly spread:
There's now so many wildfires burning in northern California that they were given group names: here's the SCU Lightning complex and the LNU lightning complex fires on Google Maps.
The SCU Lightning Complex consists of 20(!) different wildfires with a total area of 140 km² (35,000 acres) with hardly any containment so far.
The LNU Lightning Complex consists of 5 different wildfires, covering 130 km² (32,000 acres) now, uncontained. "Extreme fire behavior" is reported.
And this is what that looks like on the ground.
For (much) more on these developments, follow Daniel Swain, @Weather_West !
Lots of smoke from California's wildfires around San Francisco and Silicon Valley today.
Lightning complex fires exploding in size:
.. and forcing many thousands of Californians to evacuate:
Smoky day in San Francisco.
State of emergency declared in California:
.. and in the state of Washington too: governor.wa.gov/news-media/ins…
Dozens of homes destroyed now by one of the LNU Lightning Complex fires. Vacaville is a city of 100,000.
California severely short on firefighting crews. The state usually relies on large numbers of prisoners, but many of them are unavailable due to a Covid-19 outbreak in a North-Californian prison.
sacbee.com/news/californi…
367 wildfires raging in California now:
Smoke from California's wildfires seen from space.
Northern California's LNU Lightning Complex wildfires grew by 170% in less than 12 hours, to 500 km². Still no containment at all.
Overview:
1,200 km² burnt in 5 days.
Why California's wildfires are so extreme right now. Good explainer, even daring to mention the c-word. Once, halfway. #endclimatesilence
Climate scientist and Californian wildfire expert Daniel @Weather_West is stunned by the size of the current wildfire explosion. 2,400 km² burnt in a week, and situation not under control. Thread.
The #LNULightningComplex fires are now 860 km² (215,000 acres), 0% contained, and 4 civilians died.
The #SCULightningComplex fires are 630 km² (157,000 acres), and only 5% contained.
The #CZULightningComplex fires are 144 km² (48,000 acres), and already required 48,000 people to evacuate.
I don't know if anyone is still keeping track on the total number of people evacuated in N-California now, but it's massive. In a way, these people are climate refugees, although they can of course hope to return home in days or weeks.
California's wildfire crisis is made worse by Covid-19:
- much less prisoners available to fight the fires, since Covid-19 was found in a prison used for their training.
- lungs under threat from wildfires and Covid-19 at the same time
- masks hard to get
One of the root causes of this wildfire explosion: extremely hot, dry air is drying out the vegetation.
One of California's ferocious wildfires seen from a fire monitoring webcam, in its final minutes.
Wildfires burning all over California. @sfchronicle's Fire Map: sfchronicle.com/projects/calif…
This is what evacuation can be like:
California's Governor gets it:
More than 3,000km² burnt already in California's ongoing wildfire wave.
560 new wildfires in one week: that's on average more than 3 new wildfires starting per hour, 24/7. Must drive firefighters mad
And more to come? https://t.co/Lb75ugChX1
2,500 km2 burnt just in these 3 Northern California fire complexes. Some modest progress in containing those now. https://t.co/YAzPnJYsdt
Reminder that we’ve seen more of this in 2020: https://t.co/R1ZJDrqe5N
Total area burnt in this week's California wildfires, so far: 3,670 km² (918,000 acres). The LNU and SCU Lightning Complex fires are now #2 and #4 in state history. latimes.com/california/sto…
That's an area larger than the Dutch province of Zuid-Holland (Rotterdam, The Hague).
Dangerous days ahead for California:
https://t.co/PZRnVKAVAS
An invitation from California’s Governor:
https://t.co/qvajDXBCoP
Good overview of California’s massive, ongoing wildfire crisis. Status Sunday morning. https://t.co/51gPaUlL0U
Massive evacuations for the California wildfires. This is the map for the #SCULightningComplex. Red = order, yellow = warning.
google.com/url?sa=t&sourc…
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