Thread by @kimmaicutler

Wrong question. The wildfires we’re seeing are in part of a consequence of a legacy of 100 years of fire suppression (and climate change).

https://twitter.com/judegomila/status/1303013534591115264

It pains me that “wildfire” is now used as a political excuse to block bills allowing more infill housing in the urban core away from the wildland-urban interface. (I’m looking at you @HenrySternCA for your bullshit ass vote against #sb50 last spring.)

https://twitter.com/mjc565/status/1303031503442464769?s=21

It pains me that @GavinNewsom at least as of last year wasn’t able to take more of a harder line against more development in the WUI. abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireS… see

It pains me that we don’t allocate sufficient budget to preventative burns and vegetation management. Or respect thousands of years of indigenous knowledge of “good fires.” propublica.org/article/they-k…

At the same time, Californian voters don’t understand how (at least initially) expensive prevention can be. Think $10K a stump to remove a mature euc (or like $1M to clear a few blocks w a grove) or $3-4M to underground 1 mi of wire in the Bay Area.

https://twitter.com/vamonosla/status/1303033159924084736?s=21

Then again, 100 houses in the Bay Area is like $100-200M of real estate so putting a few million down to protect it shouldn’t be that insane. But lots of homeowners (especially older ones) don’t have the cashflow to support it.

Not trolly. Could envision a California of mid rise density surrounded by vineyards as the WUI (they served as unintentional firebreaks in Wine Country) but we couldn’t even get duplexes done this year.

https://twitter.com/VamonosLA/status/1303034341375668224

Yes, in certain jurisdictions in Oregon, having out-of-control vegetation on your own property is a public nuisance and can come with abatements or penalties.

https://twitter.com/iam_lpettingill/status/1303042868651589633?s=21

💡 Yes, California features much of the latter. Curious how prevalent this is in Oregon, where Portland is famous for its urban growth boundary.

https://twitter.com/ericpanzer/status/1303047574929121281?s=21

Wildfire 👏 is 👏 a 👏 land-use 👏 problem.

https://twitter.com/mjc565/status/1303051011108470784

Wildfire 👏 is 👏 a 👏 land-use 👏 problem.

https://twitter.com/mjc565/status/1303052039841169408

Anyway, buckle up. Tonight is the real opener of fire season. The last session featured fires that grew that big w/out wind. 🤯

Tonight we start our first fall offshore winds and we will have several of these until the first rains.

https://twitter.com/nwsspc/status/1303060877092859904?s=21

I mean, look at this dry, hot wind basically over the entire state of Oregon later tonight.

I should add, unlike @HenrySternCA who says nice things about housing & wildfire but votes the opposite way, there *are* good legislators who balance both concerns like @ilike_mike, representing much of Northern California from Marin to the Oregon border.

https://twitter.com/ilike_mike/status/1303066332385034240?s=21

Also, remember the 147 million trees that died over the last several years? That’s why there’s so much fuel load in the Sierras with relatively minimal wind (until tonight’s offshore winds event). sfchronicle.com/outdoors/stien…

https://twitter.com/thejdmorris/status/1303094002179125248

Wind is now on its way. Carried this fire in Washington State forward by 50 miles?!

https://twitter.com/weathertrader/status/1303075258983829506?s=21

Destroyed a town.

https://twitter.com/ZachAndersTV/status/1303122145682141186

Filled Portland with smoke.

https://twitter.com/bmactv/status/1303142801060712448?s=21

If you’re feeling literary, read Joan Didion on the Santa Ana wind in 1965: …periencefall2013.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/files/2013/12/…

If you’re feeling scientific, read about the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge: news.stanford.edu/press-releases…

Is any major city on the West Coast going to have clean air tomorrow?

https://twitter.com/MorganKIRO7/status/1303149057041248256

More from Washington State tonight. Winds will reach the North Bay overnight and escalate throughout the morning before settling in the evening.

https://twitter.com/carplips/status/1303154509066067970?s=21

Gonna add this to the thread today. I think I write this same thread every year.

https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/1303397752609452032

.@JerryBrownGov told us in his #capandtrade speech in 2017:

"A lot of you people are going to be alive. And you’re going to be alive in a horrible situation. You’re going to see mass migrations, vector disease and forest fires."

https://twitter.com/APWestRegion/status/885680736610562049

Does this merit the governor calling a special session?

https://twitter.com/cmarinucci/status/1303410182534299648

😭 This is much harder than telling people to wear a mask or not. This is about where people should or shouldn't live, and what public resources can be expended to support living in more firesafe areas.

https://twitter.com/HowardKushlan/status/1303412780683288577

Told you in April.

https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/1253442099036303360

Warned the night of the first lightning storm.

https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/1294897668162859010

On the positive side, doesn't look like there will be another offshore winds event for at least 2 weeks or so. So just got to ride out these particular fires and this particular smoke.

On the negative side, we have more than two months left to go in the total season, assuming rains come around Thanksgiving. (Rains used to come around Halloween growing up).

Per @judegomila's original question, we could do a Green New Deal supporting enormous #s of new jobs for mass tree thinning & vegetation management across the West + tech for aerial mapping & labeling of fuel loads.

https://twitter.com/mattlynley/status/1303741501537570816?s=20

Also, here's a Fire Season Twitter list I curated if you're interested in subscribing to meteorologists, government agencies, fire scanner watchers, etc.: twitter.com/i/lists/129776…

“Ken Kirkland at the Woolly Egg Ranch family farm said his 500 chickens have been silent all morning. When he went out to check on them around 10:30 a.m., they just were standing around staring, confused and not eating.

“They think it’s night.”

washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/0…

Other helpful links:

@windyforecast for upcoming offshore events. Use ECMWF or NAM to look at gusts.
@NASA FIRMS to look at satellite data on current fires firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/?utm_sourc…
@CIRA_CSU: rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/?sat=goes-17&z…
@NOAA for current wind speed, direction: wrh.noaa.gov/map/?obs=true&…

All of this ash will also enter our water system:

https://twitter.com/frkearns/status/1303777802206900224

Re-upping @pyrogeog's thread on wildfire mitigation strategies from.... pretty much exactly one year ago almost to the day:

https://twitter.com/pyrogeog/status/1172520411436740610

#SpecialSession #SpecialSession #SpecialSession #SpecialSession

https://twitter.com/lukehklipp/status/1304499028818759680

#SpecialSession #SpecialSession #SpecialSession #SpecialSession

Call it! We left too many ideas on the table the other week that had the votes.

https://twitter.com/GavinNewsom/status/1304509375554359296

Here are some ideas for a #SpecialSession:

https://twitter.com/EthanElkind/status/1304470719451996165

Let’s come up with a package for better fuel load and vegetation management:

https://twitter.com/LeroyWesterling/status/1304506754680512512

Good thread on burn histories of recent fires:

https://twitter.com/Al_R_Wallace/status/1304851118195785728

And yet, the state can’t do it alone. We need federal leadership:

https://twitter.com/RigelRobinson/status/1304994839163879430

Unsurprisingly, a lot of the current fires are on federal or private land, not state land:

https://twitter.com/BLMca/status/1305197991632879616

CA legislature couldn't even get duplexes done, but long-term maybe the Overton window should open for a discussion about an air rights trading system that could financially incentivize infill in defensible areas and conversion of non-defensible WUI back to nature/firebreaks.

Also worth re-upping this animated GIF from @LeroyWesterling's research.

WE ARE ON THE RCP 8.5 PATH! If you don't know what that means, you should educate yourself:

https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/1101538810008002560

We need to 10-12X prescribed burns, says Scott Stephens at @UCBerkeley.

Again, 57% of our 33 million acres of forest in California are *federally managed.*

@GavinNewsom needs to call a #SpecialSession for state and private land and pressure the president on federal land.

https://twitter.com/ryrivard/status/1305251763428220928

Shakes fist at CEQA, which saddled vegetation thinning plans for a Sierra town that later.... BURNED DOWN this month. wsj.com/articles/a-cal…

Wow, this tweet says it even better:

https://twitter.com/benfritz/status/1306643469734043648

Pretty incredible contrast in fire outcomes between indigenous and Western-managed land in this thread here. A canopy fire that drops into an underburn (rather than the reverse with a crowning fire)!

https://twitter.com/JaredDahlAldern/status/1310812699735982080

Another very good fire + CO2 emission thread:

https://twitter.com/MichaelWWara/status/1311044748614877184?s=20

Time to start up the old fire thread I started the day or so before the crazy PNW fires and Orange Apocalypse Day again.

There is a big one coming on Sunday night. You need to think about this like a Category 4 or 5 storm and plan ahead.

https://twitter.com/NWSBayArea/status/1319742485388685312