What is the central idea and 3 supporting details If you want to build a fire, the recipe calls for three ingredients: fuel, oxygen and the
ignition that puts flame to it. But wildfire in California is a witch's cauldron full of a more explosive brew with lots more ingredients, and people just keep stirring it up. An unusual outbreak of August thunderstorms erupted across California this year. Between August 12–16, thousands of lightning strikes rained down across the state. These strikes sparked numerous wildfires. Because of a heat wave, gusty winds and dry conditions, they grew into huge complexes of firestorms.
The biggest blazes include the LNU Lightning Complex in Sonoma, Lake, Napa and Solano counties. "Lightning Complex" is the name the California Department of Fire Protection gives to two or more fires in the same area started by lightning. LNU is their code for the fires' geographical location in those counties. Another huge set of fires is called the CZU August Lightning Complex. These wildfires are scorching Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties. The SCU Lightning Complex, made up of about 20 fires, is affecting Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties. Meanwhile, the River Fire is burning in Monterey County.
Tens of thousands of people have been told they must evacuate their homes. Smoke and ash from the blazes have traveled across at least 10 states. Because of the smoke, the air quality in many parts of California is a danger to public health.
"California has a really flammable ecosystem," said University of Colorado fire scientist Jennifer Balch. It catches fire easily.
Wildfires And Global Warming Are Connected
Smoke from wildfires obscures a view of the San Francisco, California, skyline on August 19, 2020. Crews battled wildfires in the San Francisco Bay Area and thousands of people were ordered to evacuate August 19, as hundreds of wildfires blazed across the state amid a blistering heat wave now in its second week. Fierce autumn winds affect parts of California. Such winds fan any spark into a huge blaze. In the hills and mountains, plenty of fuel, such as grasses, shrubs and trees, feeds the wildfires. The state suffers frequent droughts, long periods of little to no rain, while a century of humans stopping as many forest fires as possible means that now there's more fuel than ever. People have built houses in the countryside where wildfires can easily destroy them. Meanwhile, many of these fires get started by humans themselves. Because of climate change, the size of the blazes keeps increasing. The Earth's long-term weather is getting warmer because of humans' use of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.
And conditions are getting worse, fast. The area burned by wildfire in California has increased more than 500 percent since 1972. In those days, the average area burned per year was 236 square miles (611 square kilometers). Now, about 1,394 square miles (3,610 square kilometers) a year get scorched, according to a 2019 study by Williams, Balch and others.
Dozens of research studies in recent years have found a connection between bigger wildfires in the United States and global warming. Hotter weather is drying out grasses, brush and trees. They are more flammable now.
"Fuel moisture is being influenced by climate change," said University of Alberta fire scientist Mike Flannigan. When plant life such as shrubs and trees get enough regular rain, their fuel moisture is high. They don't burn well in wildfires. But an increasingly warming climate is causing fuel moisture to drop. The fuel is ready to burn.
Many areas of California have a Mediterranean climate, with long, dry summers and a winter that is mild and wet from a handful of winter storms. These conditions make the state ideal for wildfires, said LeRoy Westerling, fire scientist at University of California, Merced. However, such conditions are affected by climate change. They are being made more combustible, more ready to catch fire.

California Weather Is Ideal For Fires

With global warming, the climate keeps getting hotter, snow melts earlier in the spring, plants dry out in the summer sooner and the rains come later in the autumn. In other words, the summer fire season is getting longer.
If one of the fall storms doesn't appear, as happened in 2019, that leaves California vulnerable to fires in October and November. Autumn is when often-fierce dry winds blow from the mountains toward the ocean. These winds fan fires so they blaze up and race across the land.
There is another way climate change has worsened wildfire danger. Global warming has altered the jet stream, the river of high altitude air that moves storms and daily weather. At times now it slows down and weather patterns get stuck, often with dry periods.