Every summer across the state, the atmosphere dries up and the temperatures turn warm, sucking moisture from the landscape and turning the parched vegetation into kindling, ready to burn under the right conditions. This year, forecasters are already seeing signs that the pattern could be more intense than usual.

The snow in the Sierra Nevada, the frozen reservoir that moistens the landscape through the spring, is nearly gone; it melted off earlier than normal. This year’s grass crop is plentiful, especially in Northern California, which received more rain than the southern part of the state, and it’s already fueling fires as it dries out. And forecasters predict the summer will be exceptionally hot.

All of this adds up to a higher probability of more large wildfires than usual this summer, with the possibility that even the smallest spark could explode into a significant wildfire if not stopped quickly.

“The thing with wildfires is it could be the hottest summer on record, but to have fires, you need ignitions,” said Dr. Dan McEvoy, a regional climatologist at the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno, Nev.

In addition to a tough weather forecast, firefighting efforts face a new challenge this year: cuts to the federal agencies that assist with firefighting, prevention and recovery, including the National Weather Service, the U.S. Forest Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Tim Chavez, an assistant chief with Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency, said that even before this year’s sweeping changes, part of President Trump’s efforts to remake the government work force, some federal agencies were “struggling to keep their engines staffed.” If the staffing shortage worsens, he said, Cal Fire expects it will have to take up the slack on fires burning on federal land that are usually managed by the Forest Service.

“That impacts our ability to respond to our own state responsibility fires,” Mr. Chavez said. “There’s no doubt about it, especially when it comes to aircraft and crews, which is always the first thing you run out of.”

Wildfire season in California is year-round.

In a changing climate, wildfires in California went from a seasonal hazard to year-round catastrophes, but the peak, when fires are most abundant and the most acres burn, is still June through October.

Several small fires have already raced across the rolling hills of Northern California, where the healthy grass crop dried out this spring as temperatures warmed up.

Last month, the Inn fire burned in the Eastern Sierra foothills outside Yosemite National Park, threatening Mono City.

“This fire activity in the Eastern Sierra kind of worries me,” Mr. Chavez said. “I can’t remember a fire in the Eastern Sierra that went up the mountains like that one did. Usually they burn through the river bottom and stay in the flats, and once they get on the slope, they kind of go out.”

More fires, and much bigger ones, are expected in the months ahead. By September, officials predict fire activity across most of the state will be above normal this year.

In the last 10 years, the total number of acres burned by significant wildfires has varied from year to year. In 2020, when dry lightning sparked an outbreak of wildfires across Northern California, more than 4.3 million acres burned, but in 2022 and 2023, only about 300,000 acres burned each year. On average, about 1.4 million acres burn a year.

The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is a crucial data point for the summer wildfire outlook. A robust snowpack delays wildfire season, but a meager one, like this year’s, accelerates it. Most locations melted off several days to weeks earlier than usual because of warm, clear days in spring, and snow remained only at the highest elevations into June.

Weather models forecast that temperatures from July through September will fall within the warmest 20 percent of recent summers, according to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“This summer looks to be pretty high in the record books, and that has some significant implications for fire season,” Mr. Swain said.

When the heat waves break down, winds are expected to pick up, fanning vegetation and drying it out even more and spreading any fires that have started.

“I’m expecting this summer to be the year of wind and heat,” said Brent Wachter, a fire meteorologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Redding, Calif.

This year’s summer wildfire forecast is very different from last year’s.

It can be difficult to predict wildfire activity.

In 2024, officials predicted the summer would bring below-normal wildfire activity to some areas, in part because the snowpack was robust after a wet winter and expected to provide relief well into summer. Long-term forecasts at the time suggested below-normal temperatures.

The forecast didn’t pan out.

“We basically had a two-week-long heat wave event at the start of July, which is unprecedented,” Mr. Wachter said.

The heat set up the conditions for the Park fire, which tore through 430,000 acres in the wilderness of Northern California in August, becoming the fourth largest wildfire in state history.

Mr. Wachter said the prolonged heat waved dried the landscape in what he calls a “flash drought” and set the stage for a fire of that size in a summer when reservoirs were full after a wet winter.

“If it just was a three-day heat wave event, the likelihood of that fire exploding that quickly in a short amount of time, just in a few days, I just don’t think it would have been that way,” he said.

Mr. Wachter anticipates that this summer will bring more flash droughts, intensifying existing drought conditions in Southern California after a dry winter and creating drought conditions in Northern California.

“I think flash drought is going to be one of the buzz words this summer, and that’s mainly from the heat waves being more extended,” he said.

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“In this spirit of this great country, we must not politicize human tragedy or spread disinformation from the sidelines,” Newsom wrote in a letter to Trump. “Hundreds of thousands of Americans–displaced from their homes and fearful for the future–deserve to see all of us working in their best interests to ensure a fast recovery and rebuild.” 

Newsom cited Trump’s visit to California during the Camp and Woolsey fires in 2018. 

“As you prepare to assume the presidency once more, I invite you to come to California again–to meet with the Americans affected by these fires, see the devastation firsthand, and join me and others in thanking the heroic firefighters and first responders who are putting their lives on the line,” he wrote. 

Additionally, Newsom praised President Biden’s assistance in fighting the fires, saying he was thankful the president swiftly declared a disaster declaration. 

The letter comes as the California governor and the president-elect have clashed over Newsom’s response to the wildfires. 

In a Truth Social post Wednesday, Trump called on Newsom to resign. 

“One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground,” Trump said. “It’s ashes, and Gavin Newscum should resign. This is all his fault!!!”

Additionally, the president-elect said Newsom should have signed a declaration to pump additional water through California to avert the situation. 

Newsom’s office hit back against the accusation, calling it “pure fiction.” 

The governor himself hit back against Trump and accused him of politicizing the fires. 

“People are literally fleeing,” Newsom told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an interview that aired Wednesday. “People have lost their lives. Kids lost their schools, families completely torn asunder, churches burned down.”

“This guy wanted to politicize it,” he added, talking about Trump. “I have a lot of thoughts, and I know what I want to say. I won’t. I stood next to a president of the United States of America today, and I was proud to be with Joe Biden, and he had the backs of every single person in this community, he didn’t play politics.”

The wildfires have left at least 10 people dead and destroyed more than 10,000 structures. More than 300,000 residents are under evacuation orders or warnings. 

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In hilly, upscale Pacific Palisades, home to Hollywood stars like Jamie Lee Curtis and Billy Crystal who lost houses in the fire, officials have placed the origin of the wind-whipped blaze behind a home on Piedra Morada Drive, which sits above a densely wooded arroyo.

While lightning is the most common source of fires in the U.S., according to the National Fire Protection Association, investigators were able to rule that out quickly. There were no reports of lightning in the Palisades area or the terrain around the Eaton Fire, which started in east Los Angeles County and has also destroyed hundreds of homes.

The next two most common causes: fires intentionally set, and those sparked by utility lines.

John Lentini, owner of Scientific Fire Analysis in Florida, who has investigated large fires in California including the Oakland Hills Fire in 1991, said the size and scope of the blaze doesn’t change the approach to finding out what caused it.

“This was once a small fire,” Lentini said. “People will focus on where the fire started, determine the origin and look around the origin and determine the cause.”

So far there has been no official indication of arson in either blaze, and utility lines have not yet been identified as a cause either.

Utilities are required to report to the California Public Utilities Commission when they know of “electric incidents potentially associated with a wildfire,” Terrie Prosper, the commission’s communications director, said via email. CPUC staff then investigate to see if there were violations of state law.

The 2017 Thomas Fire, one of the largest fires in state history, was sparked by Southern California Edison power lines that came into contact during high wind, investigators determined. The blaze killed two people and charred more than 440 square miles (1,140 square kilometers).

On Friday, Southern California Edison filed a report with the CPUC related to the Eaton Fire in the hills near Pasadena, an area the utility serves.

Edison said it has not received any suggestions that its equipment was involved in the ignition of that fire, but that it filed the report with state utilities regulators out of “an abundance of caution” after receiving evidence preservation notices from insurance company lawyers.

“Preliminary analysis by SCE of electrical circuit information for the energized transmission lines going through the area for 12 hours prior to the reported start time of the fire shows no interruptions or electrical or operational anomalies until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire,” the utility reported.

While lightning, arson and utility lines are the most common causes, debris burning and fireworks are also common causes.

But fires are incited by myriad sources, including accidents.

In 2021, a couple’s gender reveal stunt started a large fire that torched close to 36 square miles (about 90 square kilometers) of terrain, destroyed five homes and 15 other buildings and claimed the life of a firefighter, Charlie Morton.

The Eaton and Palisades fires were still burning with little containment on Friday. Winds softened, but there was no rain in the forecast as the flames moved through miles of dry landscape.

“It’s going to go out when it runs out of fuel, or when the weather stops,” Lentini said. “They’re not going to put that thing out until it’s ready to go out.”

The fires have burned more than 10,000 homes and other structures since Tuesday, when they first began popping up around a densely populated, 25-mile (40-kilometer) expanse north of downtown Los Angeles. No cause has been identified for the largest fires.

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