Wildfire risk rising again; no extreme risk periods apparent yet but that could change
After another temporary reprieve period in mid-Sep, with cool weather and even some (localized) precipitation in patchy areas throughout CA, fire season is back in full swing this week. The Line Fire, which had been pretty inactive in recent days since it started during the record heatwave in SoCal during early Sep, roared back to life yesterday from within containment lines and various evacuation orders and warnings have been reissued. As of this writing, additional new fires are popping up in NorCal amid hot, dry, and breezy conditions. I would expect fire activity to continue to increase through this week as temperatures stay sustainedly high, even closer to the coast, and then also begin to pick up across the interior West again by this weekend as persistently very hot temperatures continue. As earlier noted: I suspect that places in the West that don’t usually see major wildfire activity in Oct or even Nov may do so this year (i.e., not just coastal CA, where such activity is not that unusual even later into fall given the typical seasonal lag in temperature there). There are no strong offshore wind events currently on the immediate horizon, though, which is the one piece of good news at the moment from a fire weather perspective.
