What climate change will do to the forests

The fires in California are a grim reminder of what the future holds

A burnt forest.
(Image credit: EPA-EFE/PETER DASILVA)

At the beginning of October, California's fire season was already threatening to be the worst on record. Over 600,000 acres of state land had burned by that point — a total driven by infernos like the Mendocino Complex Fire, which burned 459,000 acres to become the largest fire in California history. The total from the first nine months of 2018 alone was considerably more than the 506,000 acres that had burned on state land in all of 2017, which was itself more than twice as much as burned in 2016.

One slim hope for the rest of the year was that fall rains might keep California's trees and vegetation relatively moist. But the rains did not come. Instead, the state got sustained high winds, which dried out the already drought-stressed forests and undergrowth even further. And when a fire got going in the brush, forests, and grasslands of Butte County last week, the result was the deadliest fire in state history.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.