California’s wildfire season has been unusually mild so far this year — but fire officials warn that a looming heat wave could quickly change that, as flames near a Yosemite gateway community have already offered a preview of what dry, hot conditions can unleash.
The Dove Fire, burning in the Central Sierra foothills near Sonora, forced road closures and evacuations of hundreds of homes last weekend, shaking Californians out of what had otherwise been a relatively calm summer for wildfires. Cal Fire investigators believe the blaze was sparked by a reckless 30-year-old man.
John Buckley, a former U.S. Forest Service firefighter who now leads the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, said he wasn’t shocked when the fire erupted. Driving through the region earlier that day, he had already warned his wife that the vegetation looked primed to ignite.
“We drive back, and they’re burning over at the city of Sonora,” Buckley recalled. “The fuels are now quite primed for burning, and they’re only going to get drier.”
Crews have since gained control of the 226-acre fire, but forecasters are warning of dangerously high temperatures in the days ahead — and new scientific research suggests that heat waves and wildfire activity are closely linked across the American West.
It’s still early in California’s fire year, and experts caution against drawing sweeping conclusions. Yet the state’s numbers stand out compared to the destruction unfolding elsewhere. Wildfires have scorched millions of acres this year in Oregon, Canada and parts of Europe, while California has recorded roughly 4,030 fires burning just over 208,000 acres — well below the five-year average of about 5,300 fires and 300,000 acres burned by this point in the season, according to Cal Fire data.
Even so, Cal Fire Battalion Chief David Acuña said he steers clear of calling the season “quiet.”
“There is a superstition that when you use words like ‘quiet, slow, bored’ in the fire station, that just means that you’re about to get hit with an amazingly busy shift,” Acuña said.
John Abatzoglou, a climatology professor at UC Merced, said California has largely benefited from favorable weather patterns this year, despite a thin snowpack and an unusually hot March. That streak of good fortune, he said, is about to be tested.
“Now, of course, we have a heat wave on our doorstep,” Abatzoglou said.
National Weather Service offices throughout the state are forecasting a sharp rise in temperatures beginning later this week. The Los Angeles/Oxnard office said conditions are expected to turn “dangerously hot” by Friday.
That pairing of extreme heat and fire risk is a familiar pattern across the West, according to a study Abatzoglou co-authored, published in the journal Science Advances and led by researcher Dmitri Kalashnikov. The study found that nearly half of all wildfire acreage burned during warm-season months between 2001 and 2024 occurred during or immediately following a heat wave, particularly in forested regions.
Heat waves — defined as three or more consecutive days with temperatures in the top 10% for the season — currently account for only about 15% or less of the warm season. But climate change is driving their frequency upward, researchers say.
Abatzoglou pointed to several reasons heat and fire go hand in hand. Prolonged heat dries out vegetation, making it more flammable. It also raises nighttime temperatures, which earlier research has linked to more intense overnight fire behavior — eliminating a key window firefighters typically rely on to gain ground. Heat waves can also set the stage for lightning strikes, which have ignited some of the largest fires in California history.
“And then it’s off to the races in terms of fire activity,” Abatzoglou said.
He emphasized that not every heat wave will trigger a fire surge — an ignition still has to occur at the right place and time. But Acuña urged residents to avoid providing that spark. That means avoiding yard work, especially mowing, during the hottest parts of the day or when a red flag warning is in effect, securing tow chains so they don’t drag and throw sparks on pavement, and never parking a hot vehicle on dry grass.
Following the Dove Fire, California requested and received federal emergency assistance within hours. However, a separate and more prolonged dispute between state and federal officials continues over wildfire recovery funding, including hundreds of millions of dollars tied to last year’s devastating Los Angeles fires. Gov. Gavin Newsom said in May that FEMA had yet to release those funds.
As for what the rest of the fire season might bring, Acuña said he’s just as reluctant to make predictions as he is to use the word “quiet.”
“It depends on what the weather brings us,” he said. “If it brings us hot, windy, red flag warning conditions, then that could certainly be a problem. If it brings us rain, well, that brings us a totally different concern. We are ready to respond.”
Original source: CalMatters
