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Fire

Cameron Peak Fire is now the largest wildfire in Colorado history

Artemis Moshtaghian and Christina Maxouris
CNN
Thu, 15 Oct 2020 12:51 UTC
Cameron Peak Fire evacuation
© CNN
Airn Hartwig loads a chicken into a cardboard box as she evacuates due to the threat from the Cameron Peak Fire in Masonville, Colorado, on Wednesday.
The Cameron Peak Fire, burning just west of Fort Collins, is now the largest wildfire in Colorado history, Gov. Jared Polis said in a tweet Wednesday night.

The blaze has burned through more than 158,000 acres and is 56% contained, officials said. It was ignited on August 13 and has since been fueled by high winds and dangerous terrain that's worked against firefighters' efforts to battle the flames and increase containment.

It has now surpassed the Pine Gulch Fire, which burned about 139,007 acres earlier this year and the Hayman Fire, which burned through more than 138,000 acres in 2002, according to the US Department of Agriculture.The Cameron Peak Fire also prompted several evacuation orders Wednesday. In a statement posted on Facebook, the Larimer County Sheriff's Office on Wednesday announced there was a mandatory evacuation order for Lory State Park.


Comment: Think 2020's disasters are wild? Worse is yet to come say experts

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Fire

Two dead as dozens of forest fires burn in Syria and Lebanon


France24
Sat, 10 Oct 2020 19:01 UTC
smoke
Forest fires in Syria and neighbouring Lebanon have killed two people and burned swathes of land since Thursday, state media and officials said.

Syrian state television on Saturday morning broadcast scenes from the affected areas, where firefighters were working to extinguish the blazes.

It said hundreds of hectares had burned in the countryside of Syria's coastal Latakia and Tartus provinces, and in the central Homs province.

The health ministry said two people died in Latakia province on Friday as a result of the fires, and that 70 people in the area were taken to hospital suffering breathing difficulties.

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Snowflake Cold

Ice and fire in Argentina - 2 feet of late snowfall in Patagonia after storm

Robert W. Felix
Ice Age Now
Sat, 03 Oct 2020 19:07 UTC
snow
Two feet of snow and far below freezing in some areas, temperatures up to 43°C in others.

Meteorología de la República Argentina

PATAGONIA - Snowflakes 50 to 60 cm (2 ft) of snow in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego. With temperatures below zero, it differs from the North Argentina, registering thermal contrasts of + 40°C.

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Fire

Four million acres burned in California wildfires

Olga R. Rodriguez
Fire Engineering
Fri, 02 Oct 2020 18:26 UTC
A firefighter battles the Glass Fire burning in a Calistoga, Calif., vineyard Thursday, Oct. 1, 2020.
© AP/Noah Berger
A firefighter battles the Glass Fire burning in a Calistoga, Calif., vineyard Thursday, Oct. 1, 2020.
California is poised to hit a fearsome milestone: 4 million acres burned this year by wildfires that have killed 30 people and incinerated hundreds of homes in what is already the worst fire season on record.

Flames have scorched an area larger than Connecticut and fire crews at a blaze in the northern wine country were on high alert as forecasters warned of red flag conditions of extreme fire danger into Saturday morning.

Winds up to 30 mph (48 kph) were forecast to push through the hills in Napa and Sonoma counties as the Glass Fire, exploded in size earlier in the week, continued to threaten more than 28,000 homes and other buildings.

"It's a time of nervousness," said Paul Gullixon, a spokesman for Sonoma County.

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Fire

Wildfires tear through drought-racked Paraguay amid record heat

William Costa
The Guardian
Fri, 02 Oct 2020 11:55 UTC
Members of Paraguay’s highway patrol and local residents try to extinguish a fire on 27 September in San Bernardino, east of Asuncion, Paraguay.
© Norberto Duarte/AFP/Getty Images
Members of Paraguay’s highway patrol and local residents try to extinguish a fire on 27 September in San Bernardino, east of Asuncion, Paraguay.
Country faces more than 5,000 fires, with yellow smoke reaching the capital as neighbouring Brazil and Argentina face blazes

Devastating wildfires have broken out across across Paraguay, as drought and record high temperatures continue to exacerbate blazes across South America.

A total of 5,231 individual wildfires broke out across the country on 1 October - up 3,000 on the previous day. Most of were concentrated in the arid Chaco region in the west of the country, but thick yellow smoke had reached as far as the capital, Asunción.

Paraguay's outbreak came as the southern hemisphere heads into summer and neighbouring countries also face unprecedented wildfires. The Brazilian Amazon is recording its worst blazes in a decade, with numbers up 61% on the widely reported fires of last year, and separate fires in the southern Pantanal region.

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Fire

The Glass Fire in California burned 1 acre every five seconds as it tripled in size; reports on multiple fires across the state


CNN
Mon, 28 Sep 2020 00:00 UTC
Winery fire
© Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/Getty
Chateau Boswell Winery, Glass Fire, St. Helena, CA, September 27, 2020.
Thousands of residents have been forced to flee their Northern California homes in recent days as the fast-moving Glass Fire continues to grow.

The fire has tripled in size since it began Sunday, burning 36,236 acres and having 0% containment, Cal Fire Division Chief Ben Nichols said at a Monday evening press conference. The Glass Fire sparked in Napa Valley early Sunday morning around 4 a.m. PT, growing at a rate of around 1 acre every five seconds between Sunday night and Monday morning, according to satellite images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

More than 70,000 people have been ordered to evacuate in Sonoma and Napa counties. At least 21 people have been treated at hospitals for burns, according to local hospitals in the area. A red flag warning remains in effect for the region until 9 pm local time Monday.

Flames tore through vineyards and structures near St. Helena, roaring over hills and jumping across both the Silverado Trail and the Lodi River, despite fire crews efforts to contain it, according to CNN affiliate KPIX.
Fire St. Helena
© Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
Burning building Glass Fire, St. Helena, California
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Fire

'These are hidden deaths.' Over 1,000 likely died early due to California's wildfire smoke

Darrell Smith
The Sacramento Bee
Wed, 23 Sep 2020 13:03 UTC
Vehicles on Interstate 80 in Vacaville drive through smoke from California’s wildfires on Monday, Aug. 24, 2020.
© DANIEL KIM
Vehicles on Interstate 80 in Vacaville drive through smoke from California’s wildfires on Monday, Aug. 24, 2020. Dense wildfire smoke that blanketed the state for weeks in August and early September may have contributed to the deaths of hundreds of Californians and sent thousands more to the emergency room, Stanford University researchers say.
Dense wildfire smoke that blanketed the state for weeks in August and early September — contributing to dangerous air quality from the San Francisco Bay area to Sacramento to Fresno and beyond — may have contributed to the deaths of hundreds of Californians and sent thousands more to the emergency room, Stanford University researchers say.

Nearly 30 people have died in California wildfires that have destroyed millions of acres and continue to burn into late September. For weeks, skies above the Golden State were soiled brown or an apocalyptic orange grabbing headlines of a state on fire.

But "the total cost in terms of human lives and health is likely far larger due to the immense amount of smoke that has been inhaled over the last 3 weeks by the very large number of people living on the West Coast," said researchers at Stanford's Center on Food Security and the Environment.

Massive amounts of smoke pumped out from California's infernos sent soot levels soaring across Northern California from Silicon Valley to Fresno and here in the Sacramento region, with lethal consequences, especially for the state's senior population, the researchers showed.

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Fire

5 of the 6 largest wildfires in California history are burning right now

Aaron Feis
New York Post
Wed, 23 Sep 2020 12:41 UTC
A law enforcement officer watches flames launch into the air as fire continues to spread at the Bear fire.
© JOSH EDELSON/AFP
A law enforcement officer watches flames launch into the air as fire continues to spread at the Bear fire.
Five of the six largest wildfires in California state history have been sparked in the past two months — and they're all still raging.

The state's most aggressive fire, August Complex, has so far scorched nearly 860,000 acres of NorCal's Tehama County — nearly doubling the now second-largest Mendocino Complex in 2018, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Rounding out the all-time top six are four other blazes still currently burning, according to the agency and The Sacramento Bee, which first reported the staggering toll.

The SCU Lightning Complex has now consumed 396,624 acres near Santa Clara and Alameda counties, while the LNU Lightning Complex has decimated 363,220 acres around Sonoma and Napa counties.

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Info

Hundreds of dead birds found in Eagle County, Colorado and also in New Mexico well before snowstorm struck on September 9

John LaConte
The Aspen Times
Mon, 21 Sep 2020 14:16 UTC
A snake visits the carcass of a yellow-rumped warbler in West Vail. Dead warblers have been found all over Eagle County in recent days.
© Dave Pleshaw
A snake visits the carcass of a yellow-rumped warbler in West Vail. Dead warblers have been found all over Eagle County in recent days.
When nature writer David Gessner published his most recent book Aug. 11, he mourned our disappearing bird populations.

"As I type this, it is being reported that we have almost a third fewer birds in the world than we did in 1970," Gessner writes. "Take a moment and consider this fact: our birds are disappearing."

Within weeks of the book's release, a massive die-off would begin to sweep the western United States, with an uncountable number of birds plummeting from the sky in mid-flight. Ornithologists say hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of birds have been lost over the past month.

Many are realizing now just how widespread the event has been, as social media has helped bird watchers and avian ecologists connect the dots.

Comment: It seems likely the early cold weather across Colorado simply compounded an already existing problem for most of these insectivorous birds - lack of food prey items due the record wildfires and the resulting extreme smoke cover during much of August.

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Fire

Huge wildfire breaks out in Saudi Arabia's Taif region


Yahoo! News
Thu, 17 Sep 2020 19:27 UTC
wildfire
Emergency crews responded to a wildfire on the Amad mountain in Saudi Arabia's Taif region on September 16 and 17.

The fire broke out on September 16 and no deaths or casualties were reported, the Saudi state-owned Al-Arabiya reported.

Footage shared by Taif News, a local news account, shows the fire in Amad mountain. Saudi Civil Defense tweeted on the afternoon of September 17 that fire suppression and control operation were continuing.

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