Natural History Wanderings

Bay Nature  report

The 2020-2021 winter ends as one of the driest on record, with a long summer and fall ahead

The relationship is not so straightforward as a dry winter leading immediately to a catastrophic fire season. The 2017 North Bay fires followed an exceptionally wet winter and a record-breaking fall heat wave. The 2020 lightning fires followed a very dry winter but started in a freak ignition event, a summer lightning storm nearly unprecedented in Northern California’s recent memory. A long, hot summer and fall following a wet winter might result in a more flammable landscape than a mild, foggy summer following a dry winter.

Those are some of the caveats against predicting a bad 2021 fire season ahead. But still, scientists and land managers say, a second dry winter in a row isn’t good news for the upcoming fire season.

Read detailed article of fire risks for this coming summer at A Dry Winter Ends, and Now We Wait for Fire – Bay Nature