Overnight the County Fire grew from 44,000 acres to 70,000 fueled by dry conditions and steep terrain that made it difficult for firefighters to reach some areas of the blaze. The fire is growing by about 1,000 acres per hour. Now 980 structures are threatened although to the credit of the firefighting forces none have been damaged or destroyed. Evacuations continue to be called for and grow. There are 2,162 personnel fighting this wildfire and 5% of the blaze has been contained. Weather conditions and climate change are at the root of why forest fires across the west start earlier each year and are more devastating. The combination of rainy seasons that create a huge growth spurt followed closely by the dry, hot drought conditions later on turn the extra growth into tinder that just needs a spark to burst into a raging wildfire. Add to that high winds and high temperatures which make it much harder to contain and extinguish the wildfires. It’s a combination that is deadly as was seen last year with the Wine Country fires that claimed 44 lives.
This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite on July 02, 2018. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS’s thermal bands, are outlined in red. NASA image courtesy NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) project. Caption: Lynn Jenner with information from CA Fire.