Brutal fire season continues in California • Earth.com

Brutal fire season continues in California

Brutal fire season continues in California. Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory shows late-autumn fires burning southeast of Los Angeles. Large burn scars from earlier this year are also visible in the photograph.

California’s fire season typically ends in October, but global warming has increased the risk for fires in the fall season.

Despite the previous fires, enough brush and vegetation remains to fuel the new fires. According to NASA, strong Santa Ana winds with gusts measuring between 70 and 95 miles per hour on December 2nd and 3rd helped push the flames into new areas of dry vegetation. Brutal fire season continues in California

While the winds have since died down, there is an urgency to contain the fires before strong winds pick back up next week. 

Since the beginning of 2020, fires have burned more than 1.4 million acres in California. 

The image was captured on December 3, 2020, with the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite. California is also the most populated subnational entity in North America, and has its state capital in Sacramento. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation’s second- and fifth-most-populous urban regions, with more than 18.7 million and 9.6 million residents respectively.[13] Los Angeles is California’s most populous city, and the country’s second-most-populous, after New York City. California also has the nation’s most populous countyLos Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The City and County of San Francisco is both the country’s second most densely populated major city after New York City and the fifth-most-densely populated county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs.

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory 

By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer

News coming your way
The biggest news about our planet delivered to you each day