Though Governor Jerry Brown declared an end to the drought on April 7, after Sonoma County saw plenty of rain over the 2016-2017 winter, the state’s wildland fire service Cal Fire has been just as busy as during drought years, if not busier.
Across California, during the period from January to July 9, 2017 there have been 2,905 wildland fires, spanning more than 68,000 acres, whereas there were only 2,270 wildland fires, covering 30,574 acres in the same period in 2016, at the tail end of four years of aggressive drought conditions.
Ironically, this is due to all that rain and the growth it caused, according to Battalion Chief Marshall Turbeville.
“Where the center divider on the highway might have been bare, now there’s grass there,” Turbeville said. “Most fires start in grass. Grass fires also move the quickest and are influenced by the winds more.”
In addition to all of the so-called flashy fuels, there are still drought-stressed trees and logs lying on the ground.
“Yes, the soil is wet, they’re gaining moisture from ground but there are still some effects from three or four years of drought,” Turbeville said. “This past June was warmer than average and July is starting out very warm, and if we don’t have coastal fog but we get two weeks of warm, dry weather and you throw in some wind with that grass, then it’s not about if, but when, we have a fire.”
According to meteorologists, these conditions aren’t expected to change much in the short term, and that could spell trouble down the road in the fire season.
“In June we had a consistent ridge of high pressure sitting over California and the west coast and that keeps the marine layer really shallow, so you don’t get much onshore flow because of that, you don’t get that stratus and fog,” said meteorologist and climatologist Will Sarr of Western Weather.
The first year or two following an El Nino are often hotter than average, Sarr said, though he admitted there wasn’t a lot of data to support that. He also didn’t want to oversimplify the myriad factors contributing to the ongoing heat wave.
The high pressure ridge on the coast wasn’t the only issue, he said.
“For a while we had a really warm air mass coming from the south,” he said. “That meant Alexander Valley and Dry Creek Valley were around 110 degrees for several days. That was just adding insult to injury with the strong ridge of high pressure.”
Whatever the ultimate cause for the hot, dry weather, what seems apparent to Sarr at Western Weather, is that the heat is here to stay for now.
“For the time being, we’re going to see a modest cool down, but that’s probably not going to be long lived,” he said on Tuesday. “There will be a little onshore flow for the next week or so, but temperatures will be staying above average starting on Friday and then almost all the way through the 10-day forecast.”
At Cal Fire, Turbeville said the sheer number of fires in the state are pulling the finite manpower and resources of the department in many different directions as aid gets sent to fight large wildland fires in Butte, San Luis Obispo, Kings and Santa Barbara counties. The Sonoma-Lake-Napa unit has been fully staffed up since the last week in June, but luckily there haven’t been too many fires in the local area, yet.
Citing fires in Cloverdale and on Hot Springs Road, he said there had only been about 18 acres burned in Sonoma County, so far.
“There hasn’t been anything big as far as acreage but as far as starts go, they slightly above average,” he said. “In general, Sonoma County is overdue for a large, damaging fire, such as the ‘64 Hanley Fire or the ‘78 Creighton Ridge Fire. Most of our fires have been in the geysers or less populated areas but each day we’re closer to a bad fire.”
The Valley Fire of September 2015 that burned its way through Middletown, Cobb, Whispering Pines and Hidden Valley Lake in Lake County is still listed as the third most destructive fire in California’s history, with more than 76,000 acres and almost 2,000 structure burned and four lives lost.
“Fire is a natural process, it’s going to happen, so we aim to reduce or eliminate all human causes like mowing or pulling over vehicles in dry grass,” Turbeville said.
With the average fire starts higher than in years past, the hot, dry weather conditions and an abundance of fuels that are drying out in the heat, Turbeville said he was concerned about the next two or possibly three months of what could be a very busy fire season.
Cal Fire’s burn suspension for Sonoma County went into effect on July 1.
