Dry and windy weather hampered efforts to contain destructive fires that are devouring the bone-dry forests of drought-stricken northern California, as a small wildfire swept through a mobile home park, leaving dozens of homes in ashes and injuring at least one person.
Related: Grizzly Flats: the California town leveled by the Caldor fire – in pictures
Continue reading...The sky over parts of Nevada and California turned red and orange as the Caldor fire, which erupted over the weekend, exploded in size on Tuesday and ran through the town of Grizzly Flats, destroying many buildings and forcing residents to leave. Two were injured. Officials estimated that the blaze had blown through 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres)
Caldor fire explodes in size as Pacific Gas & Electric begins shutting off power to 51,000 customers
Critically dangerous fire weather was forecast across northern California from Tuesday afternoon into Wednesday evening, threatening to intensify several large blazes and increasing the risk of new ones, as a small rural town in the Sierra Nevada was ravaged by a fire that grew with devastating speed.
The Caldor fire, which erupted over the weekend, exploded in size on Tuesday and ran through the town of Grizzly Flats, destroying many buildings and forcing residents to leave. Two were injured. Officials estimated that the blaze had blown through 30,000 acres – up from 6,500 acres reported by the California department of forestry and fire protection (Cal Fire) earlier that day.
Continue reading...Officials have declared a dire water shortage at Lake Mead, the US’s largest reservoir, triggering significant water cuts in Arizona and other western states.
The US Bureau of Reclamation’s first ever declaration of a 'tier 1' shortage represents an acknowledgment that after a 20-year drought, the reservoir that impounds the Colorado River at Hoover Dam has receded to its lowest levels since it was created in the 1930s
Continue reading...Officials issue first-ever declaration of tier 1 shortage at Lake Mead as it falls to lowest level since its creation
Officials have declared a dire water shortage at Lake Mead, the US’s largest reservoir, triggering major water cuts in Arizona and other western states. The US Bureau of Reclamation’s first-ever declaration of a “tier 1” shortage represents an acknowledgment that after a 20-year drought, the reservoir that impounds the Colorado River at the has receded to its lowest levels since it was created in the 1930s.
Already, the lake is at about 35% capacity – the white “bathtub ring” that lines its perimeter indicates where the water level once was. The lake’s level is projected to fall even lower by the end of the year, prompting cutbacks in January 2022, the Bureau of Reclamation announced Monday.
Continue reading...Streets go quiet and shops close early as temperatures pass 100F in latest Pacific north-west heatwave
“No, no, no,” Linda Longoria cried as she heard the weather forecast for Portland, Oregon on Friday: 100F (38C). “I can’t do it. Even in the shade it’s so humid.”
Longoria, 65, and her son are homeless and stay in hotels when they can but sometimes are forced to sleep outdoors. A lifelong resident of the city, she shook her head: “A heatwave in Portland. It’s not usually like this.”
Continue reading...As flames approached, Kimberly Price fled her beloved California hometown of Greenville. An hour later, most of it was gone
After weeks of fire, smoke and warnings, Kimberly Price and her beloved town had run out of time.
With wind driving the Dixie fire directly into Greenville, Price’s longtime partner, John Hunter, told her she needed to leave. Price, 58, had spent most of her life in the close-knit Sierra Nevada community. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving, but the flames were everywhere.
Continue reading...Every morning after moving here, I thought I must have done something right because I got to live in all this majesty. Then the Dixie fire took it away
My defiantly quirky, beautiful adopted hometown turned into a ghost town last night. There are so many things I could tell you about Greenville. There were over a thousand people and change, though the population sign still said 2,000.
We all have an opinion. About everything. We are a microcosm of America and often frustrated with each other. Greenville is filled with do-gooders, volunteers, retirees, hippies, bikers, and rednecks, ranchers, cowboys, and people who never felt like the town they were born in was quite the right fit for them. We were extended families and single moms and dads. We were drunks. We were sober. We tried not to be too judgmental lest someone judge us back. We were recent survivors of Paradise, too.
Continue reading...The fast-moving Dixie fire has continued to burn through northern California, leaving much of the gold rush town of Greenville in ashes. The three-week-old fire has burned more than 500 sq miles and destroyed dozens of homes. Greenville was previously damaged by a significant fire in 1881 but maintained some buildings that were more than a century old
Continue reading...The northern California town of Greenville was devastated by the Dixie fire, currently the largest wildfire in the state. The town dates back to the Gold Rush era with buildings more than a century old. Firefighters did all they could against the flames but the fast-moving blaze left many structures in ashes
Continue reading...More than a billion sea creatures across the Pacific north-west perished in this year’s heatwave. And it’s just a taste of what’s to come
When forecasts foreshadowed the Pacific north-west’s devastating heatwave at the end of June, marine biologist Christopher Harley was alarmed and intrigued.
Then came the smell, and his feelings somberly shifted.
Continue reading...A conservation group recorded the video in the Columbia River on a day when water temperatures breached 70F
Salmon in the Columbia River were nearly boiled to death when water temperatures rose during the Pacific north-west’s record-shattering heatwave, according to a conservation group that has documented the disturbing sight.
In a video released on Tuesday by the non-profit organization Columbia Riverkeeper, a group of sockeye salmon swimming in a tributary of the river can be seen covered in angry red lesions and white fungus, the results of stress and exposure to extreme temperatures.
Continue reading...A group of firefighters had a close escape when fast-moving flames engulfed them as they battled the Tamarack wildfire in Nebraska. After driving straight through the inferno, the crew emerged unscathed. Poor humidity and wind conditions have caused the Tamarack fire to grow up to 58,417 acres, prompting local authorities to issue an evacuation order.
This video was provided without sound.
A hundred athletes are picked each year for the 135-mile race. This time the climate was especially brutal
In the Badwater Basin at the bottom of California’s Death Valley, the air feels like a giant hair dryer and the pavement can melt the soles of your shoes.
Yet on Monday night, 100 of the world’s top endurance runners set off on what has become known as “the world’s toughest foot race”, carving 135 miles of terrain through one of the planet’s most extreme climates at the most intense time of year.
Continue reading...Bootleg Fire, largest wildfire in US and one of at least 70 wildfires, torches more dry forest landscape in Oregon
The largest wildfire in the US torched more dry forest landscape in Oregon on Sunday, one of dozens of major blazes burning across the west as critically dangerous fire weather loomed in the coming days.
The destructive Bootleg Fire just north of the California border grew to more than 476 sq miles (1,210 sq km), an area about the size of Los Angeles.
Continue reading...Bootleg is now the largest US forest fire at 281,208 acres and just 22% contained as ‘excessive heat’ forecast
At least 70 large wildfires are burning across the US west and nearby states – engulfing more than 1m acres in flames – as fears mount that shifting conditions can worsen an already dire situation. Significant areas of these states are in the grips of drought conditions that are considered “extreme” and “exceptional” – the most severe categories.
Related: Heat exhaustion, apocalyptic scenes: what it’s like fighting the US’s biggest wildfire
Continue reading...Pyrocumulus clouds viewable from 100 miles away as Bootleg fire grows beyond size of New York City
Smoke and heat from a huge wildfire in south-eastern Oregon are creating giant “fire clouds” over the blaze – dangerous columns of smoke and ash that can reach up to six miles (10km) in the sky and are visible from more than 100 miles (160km) away.
Authorities have put these clouds at the top of the list of the extreme fire behavior they are seeing amid the Bootleg fire, the largest wildfire burning in the US. The inferno grew on Friday to about 377 sq miles (976 sq km), an area larger than New York City, and was raging through a part of the American west that is enduring a historic drought.
Continue reading...I’m proud to take on devastating blazes. But sometimes I wonder if anyone else sees the scale of the crisis
I’m a firefighter currently battling the Bootleg fire in southern Oregon, the largest blaze right now in the US. As I write this, it’s already ripped through over 200,000 acres (312.5 sq miles).
I’m part of a crew that arrived last Thursday. We were one of the first on the scene, and several of us have already gotten heat exhaustion, one guy got fuel in his eye from a water pump and two of our division’s masticators (giant machinery that functions like a lawn mower but for an entire forest) burned up.
Continue reading...Thousands have been forced to evacuate from Alaska to Wyoming amid soaring temperatures and a drought
Nearly 60 wildfires were burning across 10 states in the parched American west on Tuesday, with the largest, in Oregon, consuming an area nearly twice the size of Portland.
The fires have torched homes and forced thousands to evacuate from Alaska to Wyoming, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Arizona, Idaho and Montana accounted for more than half of the large active fires.
Continue reading...The wellspring of Lake Mead created by the dam’s blocking of the Colorado River has plummeted to an historic low as states in the west face hefty cuts in their water supplies
Had the formidable white arc of the Hoover dam never held back the Colorado River, the US west would probably have no Los Angeles or Las Vegas as we know them today. No sprawling food bowl of wheat, alfalfa and corn. No dreams of relocating to live in a tamed desert. The river, and dam, made the west; now the climate crisis threatens to break it.
The situation here is emblematic of a planet slowly, inexorably overheating. And the catastrophic consequences of the extreme weather this brings.
Continue reading...