Hundreds of Wildfires sparked by lightning storm
Pastor Dale Morgan
Hundreds of Wildfires sparked by lightning storm*
By TERENCE CHEA,
Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO - In less than a day, an electrical storm unleashed nearly
8,000 lightning strikes that set more than 800 wildfires across Northern
California _ a rare example of "dry lightning" that brought little or no
rain but plenty of sparks to the state's parched forests and grasslands.
The weekend storm was unusual not only because it generated so many
lightning strikes over a large geographical area, but also because it
struck so early in the season and moved in from the Pacific Ocean. Such
storms usually don't arrive until late July or August and typically form
southeast of California.
"You're looking at a pattern that's climatologically rare. We typically
don't see this happen at this time of summer," said John Juskie, a
science officer with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. "To see
8,000, that's way up there on the scale."
Thousands of firefighters battled the blazes Tuesday from the ground and
air. The lightning-caused fires have scorched tens of thousands of acres
and forced hundreds of residents to flee their homes, though few
buildings have been destroyed, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
"It's just extremely, extremely dry," Berlant said. "That means any
little spark has the potential to cause a large fire. The public needs
to be extra cautious because we don't need any additional wildfires."
Despite the many lightning strikes that hit the ground on Saturday
alone, the weekend thunderstorm brought little precipitation because the
rain evaporated in hot, dry layers of the atmosphere before it hit the
ground, Juskie said.
The lightning storm struck California when the state was experiencing
one of its driest years on record. Earlier this month, Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought and directed agencies to
speed up water deliveries to drought-stricken areas. Many communities
are have adopted strict conservation measures.
From San Francisco to Los Angeles, cities have only seen a tiny
fraction of the rainfall they normally receive in a typical year. In the
Central Valley, the cities of Sacramento, Modesto, Stockton and Red
Bluff have recorded their driest March-to-May periods since at least the
19th century, according to the weather service.
"A combination of lightning and very dry fuels will spark fires," said
Mark Strobin, a weather service meteorologist in Monterey. "It doesn't
take much nowadays especially with how dry it is."
Even before the lightning struck, California had already seen an
unusually large number of destructive wildfires with about 140 square
miles burned, compared to about 66 square miles during the same period
last year, according to state officials. The fire season typically does
not peak until late summer or early fall.
"This doesn't bode well for the fire season," said Ken Clark, a
meteorologist in Southern California with AccuWeather.com. "We're not
even into the meat of the fire season at this point, and the brush is
extremely dry. It's not going to get any better, it's going to get worse."
The weekend's lightning storm combined with extremely dry conditions to
spark about 840 separate blazes from the Big Sur area of Monterey County
to Del Norte County on the Oregon border.
By contrast, 574 lightning-sparked fires blackened about 86 square miles
in Northern California in all of 2007.
One of the state's worst wildfire years occurred in 2001, when more than
2,000 lightning-caused blazes burned about 289 square miles, according
to the National Interagency Fire Center.
Areas hit the hardest by the weekend thunderstorm include Mendocino
County, where 131 fires have burned more than 20 square miles and
threatened about 500 homes; Butte County, where 25 fires have burned
about 6 square miles and threatened 400 homes; and the Shasta-Trinity
Forest, where more than 150 fires have burned about 12 square miles and
threatened 200 homes.
On Tuesday, fire crews from Nevada and Oregon arrived after
Schwarzenegger requested extra help. Smoke from the fires has darkened
skies in the San Francisco Bay area and Central Valley, causing public
health officials to issue air-quality warnings.
The weather service has said more dry thunderstorms could strike
Northern California later this week.
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Associated Press Writer Alicia Chang contributed to this story from Los
Angeles.