Northern California has had a tough time of it recently. August of 2020 has seen the state endure a rough set of wildfires, all happening at once. The wine country of Sonoma County, the inland orchards of Lake County, and the mountains of San Mateo and Santa Cruz Counties are all torched at once, leading to mass evacuations. The air quality across the Bay Area is severely compromised. This poses serious health risks, as most Northern California homes do not have air-conditioning (they usually don’t need it!), and the state is experiencing temperatures in the 90s and 100s Fahrenheit. The heat emergency leads to more potential fire hazards, and the fire hazards lead to more heat emergencies. It’s not an easy situation.
So what is causing these wildfires? How are they all igniting at once?
A major cause is heat lightning.
Here in Ohio, we have thunderstorms on a regular basis, particularly in the summer. In California, thunderstorms are remarkably rare.
Since thunderstorms do not happen there regularly, it was a shocker last weekend when massive heat lightning storms occurred in the middle of the night. Families were awakened by explosions, as lightning struck electricity boxes. Much of the Bay Area lost power, as huge lightning strikes scattered across the region.
This lightning happened without rain. The ground was dry, and had been parched for weeks. California is no longer in a drought, as it had been in recent years, but the ground did not have much moisture. Lightning hit dry fields, and dry trees, and spontaneous fires broke out across several counties.
We are lucky for many reasons here in Cincinnati. Among those reasons? We get plenty of rain, and our thunderstorms do not spark devastating wildfires.
