California's weather whiplash this winter could be setting the stage for a dangerous wildfire season.
SAN FRANCISCO -- With vast stretches of desert that give way to towering, snow-capped mountains or the waters of the Pacific Ocean, California's landscape has always been alluring.
"The dangerous side to this could be -- and we've seen this in the past -- is we get all this moisture, which increases the amount of spring growth around the state, and then all that growth dries out after we no longer get more moisture and becomes just additional fuels," Andrew Schwartz, lead scientist at the University of California, Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab, told CNN.
It's happened before. Issac Sanchez, CalFire's battalion chief, said he recalls 2020 being an"unusual year," with the season starting off with atmospheric river storms that dumped plenty of rain and snow and fueled vegetation growth across California. In just three weeks, the storms brought an average of nearly 12 inches of rain -- more than 32 trillion gallons of water -- to the state. San Francisco saw nearly 18 inches in that three-week span, which is more than the city accumulated in the previous 12 months combined.
Climate researchers have said it's the lack of precipitation, higher temperatures and an increase in evaporative demand -- also known as the"thirst of the atmosphere" -- that has pushed the West's drought into historic territory. "It could be that the faucet providing the atmospheric rivers that we are seeing shuts off abruptly for the remainder of the winter," Solander told CNN. The rain California has already seen"could promote the growth of [plant] fuels" that would increase the likelihood that areas which have burned in years past could burn again.
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