Thousands of California firefighters are battling the blaze. Can trigger lightning and its own weather system. – VG

The flames have reached such a height that they form their own cloud system with strong lightning and high winds. This in turn provides new nourishment for the forest fires that are developing at turbo speeds.

Around 5,400 crews are fighting to gain control of this sea of ​​flames, but late Monday they only had around 22 percent control of the fire, reports the California Department of Fire and Forestry.

– If these clouds get high enough, they have the opportunity to trigger lightning against the ground, warns Julia Ruthford.

Ruthford is a federally employed meteorologist who is set aside to monitor how fires develop and affect the weather.

Dixie races around

The fire has been named Dixie and is the largest that has erupted in the forests of northern California since the middle of the month. It is part of a climate crisis that has brought suffocating heat and alarming drought. Over the weekend, Dixie merged with another fire and triggered new evacuations.

Jon Cappleman lives in the village near the town of Twain. He tells AFP that Dixie is the biggest fire he has ever seen. But he will not allow himself to be evacuated and soak the ground and houses with water from a nearby stream.

Together with his wife and goats, he creates a large area around the farm that is free of dry grass, shrubs and bushes.

Exposed

Uncontrolled forest fires are common in California, but this summer has been particularly vulnerable, and the season is far from over. The fires have burned three times more vegetation this year than at this time last summer, which was the worst fire year in California’s history.

Firefighters have been flown in all the way from Florida to assist in the fight against Dixie and the development of fire-fighting clouds.

Despite its large scale, the fire has burned 800,000 acres, it has mostly affected remote areas and taken with it few residential houses and buildings.

Drought and heat

The fire nightmare in California and Oregon comes very early in the season, driven by years of drought, strong gusts and a suffocating heat at the start of summer. The experts are largely in agreement in their analysis that this is linked to climate change.

And the signs are clear. Golf courses, outdoor areas, lakes and ponds – the grass is yellowish and dry and the water level is record low.

A preliminary investigation shows that Dixie was triggered by a tree that fell over one of the many thousands of power lines that run across the forest. The power grid is owned by Pacific Gas & Company, a private operator that in 2018 was found guilty of an arson that destroyed the city of Paradise and killed 86 people.

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