The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: Park Fire Becomes Largest in U.S. So Far This Year
Dear Diary. As predicted by many including yours truly, the lush vegetation induced by a wet El Nino winter dried up because of a record hot summer in California and has become fuel for large fires. The Park Fire has become the United States’ largest so far. Don’t let anyone tell you that the Park Fire is not a climate crisis related item and is just a “natural phenomenon:”
Here are the latest details on explosive and devastating wildfires in the West from the New York Times:
Firefighters Race to Contain Wildfires in California and Oregon – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Park Fire in California Grows Dramatically, Becoming Largest in U.S. This Year
The fire in Northern California has burned more than 307,000 acres. In Oregon, firefighters were working to contain the Durkee fire, which has covered at least 288,000 acres.
A firefighting aircraft drops retardant to prevent the spread of the Park fire along Highway 32 in Chico, Calif., on Friday. Credit…Daniel Dreifuss for The New York Times
By Alan BlinderJohn Yoon and Kate Selig
July 27, 2024 Updated 11:49 a.m. ET
The Park fire in Northern California nearly doubled in size on Friday night, becoming the country’s largest so far this year, as firefighters raced to contain scores of blazes across the American West.
Federal officials say active fires have burned more than 1.8 million acres. With smoke darkening the skies, authorities in California and Oregon refined evacuation zones and urged people to be prepared to flee with little notice. Already this week, thousands of people have been told to evacuate, and the smoke has triggered air quality alerts across the Pacific Northwest and Mountain West.
The sprawling fire in California has expanded rapidly to more than 307,000 acres in Butte, Tehama and Shasta Counties, near Chico, becoming the largest in the country, fire officials said. The fire is also among the largest in the state’s history.
The fire’s growth triggered a new wave of evacuation orders and warnings on Friday, according to Cal Fire. In Paradise, which was almost completely destroyed by the Camp fire in 2018, officials issued an evacuation warning for the entire town on Friday night.
The fire was still zero percent contained on Saturday morning. Cal Fire expects that the cooler temperatures and higher humidity forecast for Saturday will aid firefighters. But officials predicted the fire would continue to grow and did not have an estimate for when it may start to be contained.
Track all the major fires here ›
By The New York Times Base map from Mapbox and OpenStreetMap
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday declared a state of emergency for Butte and Tehama Counties, in addition to Plumas County, where the Gold Complex fire had burned nearly 3,000 acres.
The northern part of the Park fire grew dramatically on Friday, Jeremy Pierce, a Cal Fire operations section chief, said at a news conference. Fire officials said that the fire was expanding by as much as 5,000 acres an hour and that about 4,000 people were under evacuation orders.
Oregon was also contending with fires. The Durkee fire, which has unleashed havoc in a sparsely populated region close to the Idaho border since a lightning strike on July 17, was covering at least 288,000 acres. To the southwest, in the Malheur National Forest, the Falls fire has claimed more than 140,000 acres. And the Lone Rock fire has raced across more than 136,000 acres since it started on July 13 about 10 miles from Condon, Ore.
“The wildfires in eastern Oregon have scaled up quickly,” Gov. Tina Kotek of Oregon said this week. “We are facing strong erratic winds over the region that could impact all fires. Rain is not getting through. Some communities do not have power. The situation is dynamic, and the teams on the ground are taking it day by day.”
Track all the major fires here ›
By The New York Times Base map from Mapbox and OpenStreetMap
In Oregon, the authorities said Friday that the pilot of a firefighting plane had been found dead after officials lost contact with the aircraft, a single-engine, single-seat tanker, on Thursday evening. The plane had been responding to a blaze blamed on a lightning strike near the Falls fire.
Lisa Clark, a spokeswoman for the Malheur National Forest and the Bureau of Land Management, the agency that contracted the plane, said officials were investigating the cause of the crash. The authorities did not immediately release the pilot’s name.
Nearly 19,000 people in Oregon were covered by fire evacuations on Saturday, state officials said.
Still, the authorities said they were encouraged in some areas. Officials reported Friday that the Lone Rock fire’s risks to structures had “reduced greatly,” and evacuations near some other blazes eased.
Enormous stretches of California, Arizona, Utah and Idaho — encompassing nearly a million people — were covered by “red flag” warnings on Saturday morning, which the National Weather Service issues when conditions like strong winds and low humidity leave areas more vulnerable than usual to fires.
Although it is still somewhat early in fire season, and despite the relatively small size of many fires, this year is shaping up to be a damaging one. On Saturday, the National Interagency Fire Center said there had been 27,187 fires this year, affecting about 3.7 million acres. By the same time last year, there had been more fires, but a quarter the number of acres had been affected. The federal government spent more than $3.1 billion on firefighting last year.
Most wildfires are classified as caused by humans, but the Park fire this week was notable for the circumstances the authorities described: A man pushed a burning vehicle into a gully in Butte County, causing it to tumble some 60 feet down an embankment. A suspect was arrested, held without bail and scheduled for arraignment next week.
The authorities have not publicly suggested a motive but said that the suspect — identified as Ronnie Dean Stout, 42, of Chico — had a criminal history, including a conviction for robbery with great bodily injury.
Isabella Kwai contributed reporting.
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education. More about Alan Blinder
John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news. More about John Yoon
Kate Selig is a Times national reporter and a member of the 2024-25 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their career. More about Kate Selig
Much More:
Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Saturday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)