This week’s broiling heatwave in the US south-west is just the start of what experts warn will be a brutally hot summer, setting the stage for an active wildfire season – even in places that don’t burn often.
Thanks to a wet winter, the dangers could be delayed in many fire-prone regions across the west, including in California forests where the threats from catastrophic blazes are often high. But the extra rainfall also helped seed invasive grasses that spread across sparse arid landscapes, and rapidly dried as temperatures rose.
These parched plants are already fueling fire. Even after a cool spring, flames ripped through the yellowing hillsides east of the San Francisco Bay Area earlier this week, a worrying sign of how quickly conditions can change. And in the south-west and Great Basin region, which includes most of Nevada and areas of Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon and California, fire season is already in full swing.
Read the rest of the story at The Guardian.