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This summer was hot. It was wet. It was deadly. For most of us, it was a preview of the rest of our lives.
So here we are: Another summer in the books.
After Labor Day, whites go back in the closet; kids go back to school. Astronomically speaking, there are still technically 20 days left of summer, and climatologically speaking, we may have even longer to go than that — summers are getting longer as autumns contract. But culturally, anyway, we’re now headed into fall, an incongruous transition epitomized by the bastardized existence of the iced pumpkin spice latte. You know you’re living in the age of climate change when ...
It’s a good time, though, for taking stock. An astonishing 96% of Americans have faced at least one extreme weather alert from the National Weather Service since May 1, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Danger Season tracker reports. Further, only seven counties out of 3,224 in the whole country and its territories had no heat, flood, fire, or storm warnings between May 1 and August 29 of this year, according to additional numbers supplied to Heatmap by the UCS — including, surprisingly, San Fransisco County in California, home of what has been called the single-most economically vulnerable major city to climate change in the U.S.
These were the others that dodged extreme weather alerts: Aleutians East Borough (Alaska); Aleutians West Census Area (Alaska); Ketchikan Gateway Borough (Alaska); Kodiak Island Borough (Alaska); and Norton City (Virginia). Together, they have a population of around 39,500 — just a fraction of San Francisco County’s 815,200.
But while San Francisco, some islands and bays in remote regions of Alaska, and a sliver of Virginia got lucky (this time and so far), it was a bad summer to be in Arizona, where there were more NWS extreme weather alerts issued than in any other state. Coconino County, home of the capital of Flagstaff, saw 146 alerts this summer due to a parade of heat, flood, and fire threats, followed closely by Mohave County, in the state’s northwesternmost corner, with a total of 145. New Mexico was right on Arizona’s tail with five counties in the top 10:
When it came to heat alerts specifically, Texas and Puerto Rico dominated the top of the list. In fact, Louisiana’s Sabine Parish was the highest-ranked non-Texan or Puerto Rican county for heat alerts, clocking in way down at #96.
The most flood alerts were experienced by California’s Inyo County, the home of Death Valley, which might be surprising until you remember how little rain it takes to trigger a disaster in the desert. Washington’s Yakima, Kittitas, and Skamania counties lead the list for fire weather alerts; and South Carolina’s Georgetown, Colleton, and Charleston counties lead for storm alerts. (The data was collected just before the brunt of Hurricane Idalia swept through northern Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas). California’s Los Angeles County, the most populous in the country, faced a total of 80 extreme weather alerts this summer; the average for all counties was around 44.
The UCS Danger Season data (which will continue to be collected here through October) did not account for air quality warnings, which were the main story of the early summer in the U.S. — at times, more than a third of Americans faced degraded AQI due to smoke billowing south from the Canadian wildfires (which are themselves record-breaking). June 7 was the worst day for wildfire smoke exposure in American history “by far,” my colleague Robinson Meyer reported, and it happened not on the West Coast, where fires are routine, but in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Toronto.
The next month, July, was the hottest month on Earth in probably 120,000 years (so you have that bragging right on about 4,000 or so generations of your ancestors). Some 40,000 different locations around the world recorded their hottest days ever in 2023, with nearly 20,000 of those in the United States, according to NOAA’s records. Though we didn’t break the global heat record this year (Death Valley only reached 128 degrees Fahrenheit, short of the 130 it needed to beat), the planet recorded its warmest day ever a few different times. Meanwhile, Vermont saw catastrophic summer flooding.
Then, in August, a grass fire fueled by hurricane winds ripped through Maui. Even three weeks later, we still don’t know how many people were killed. Undoubtedly, though, it is the deadliest wildfire in modern U.S. history — and all the more shocking for the fact that it burned through a former wetland, a grim testament to the effects of colonialism. America might not be through reckoning with massive fires, either; the peak of fire season is known as “Snaptember” among hot shot crews for a reason.
And summer wasn’t through with us yet. Hilary became the first tropical storm to hit Southern California in 84 years, and while the damage wasn’t too bad, the Los Angeles Times credits the urgency of the early warnings for saving lives. Subsequently, Hurricane Idalia became the first hurricane to make U.S. landfall in what is predicted to be an “above normal” season, strengthening from a Category 1 to a Category 4 storm in 24 hours thanks to record-warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico. Reports of the damage are still trickling in, but it can’t be good news for insurers in Florida and the Southeast.
It is difficult to tie any one weather-related disaster to climate change, but as Michael Wehner, a senior staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, once succinctly put it to Mother Jones: “It’s not: Climate change flooded my house. It’s: Climate change changed the chances of flooding my house.” So, let’s look at the chances.
A recent study found that the prime wildfire conditions in Canada this year, which caused the choking smoke on the East Coast, were “at least twice as likely to occur there as they would be in a world that humans hadn’t warmed by burning fossil fuels,” The New York Times reports. The July heat dome that baked the South was “at least five times more likely due to human-caused climate change,” an analysis by Climate Central and The Guardian found. The odds of Vermont’s supposedly once-a-century flooding happening within 12 years of another 100-year storm in the state, Hurricane Irene, was just 0.6 percent. The fires in Maui were caused by compounding climate problems, The Washington Post reports, such as higher average temperatures and more intense hurricanes — both of which also have links to emissions-fueled warming. And Hurricane Idalia’s rapid intensification is what we’d expect to see from human-fueled ocean warming, too. Then there’s El Niño, which plays a part in all this chaos as well; it’s why scientists expect next year to be an even bumpier ride for earthly life than this summer has been.
That might not be very heartening to hear but consider this: If you’re a resident of anywhere other than San Francisco and a few odd places like Alaska’s Bristol Bay Borough (population: 838), then this summer was your dry run. You’ve learned more than you ever expected you’d need to know about indoor air purification; you spent 90 minutes prepping for wildfire season; you’ve checked in on elderly neighbors; you’ve even brushed up on your gin rummy skills so you can stay off your phone when the power goes out during the next (or same?!) hurricane. Look at you go. You’re adaptable. Heck, even iced pumpkin spice lattes are starting to grow on you now.
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Though it might not be as comprehensive or as permanent as renewables advocates have feared, it’s also “just the beginning,” the congressman said.
President-elect Donald Trump’s team is drafting an executive order to “halt offshore wind turbine activities” along the East Coast, working with the office of Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, the congressman said in a press release from his office Monday afternoon.
“This executive order is just the beginning,” Van Drew said in a statement. “We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”
The announcement indicates that some in the anti-wind space are leaving open the possibility that Trump’s much-hyped offshore wind ban may be less sweeping than initially suggested.
In its press release, Van Drew’s office said the executive order would “lay the groundwork for permanent measures against the projects,” leaving the door open to only a temporary pause on permitting new projects. The congressman had recently told New Jersey reporters that he anticipates only a six-month moratorium on offshore wind.
The release also stated that the “proposed order” is “expected to be finalized within the first few months of the administration,” which is a far cry from Trump’s promise to stop projects on Day 1. If enacted, a pause would essentially halt all U.S. offshore wind development because the sought-after stretches of national coastline are entirely within federal waters.
Whether this is just caution from Van Drew’s people or a true moderation of Trump’s ambition we’ll soon find out. Inauguration Day is in less than a week.
Imagine for a moment that you’re an aerial firefighter pilot. You have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and now you’ve been called in to fight the devastating fires burning in Los Angeles County’s famously tricky, hilly terrain. You’re working long hours — not as long as your colleagues on the ground due to flight time limitations, but the maximum scheduling allows — not to mention the added external pressures you’re also facing. Even the incoming president recently wondered aloud why the fires aren’t under control yet and insinuated that it’s your and your colleagues’ fault.
You’re on a sortie, getting ready for a particularly white-knuckle drop at a low altitude in poor visibility conditions when an object catches your eye outside the cockpit window: an authorized drone dangerously close to your wing.
Aerial firefighters don’t have to imagine this terrifying scenario; they’ve lived it. Last week, a drone punched a hole in the wing of a Québécois “Super Scooper” plane that had traveled down from Canada to fight the fires, grounding Palisades firefighting operations for an agonizing half-hour. Thirty minutes might not seem like much, but it is precious time lost when the Santa Ana winds have already curtailed aerial operations.
“I am shocked by what happened in Los Angeles with the drone,” Anna Lau, a forestry communication coordinator with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, told me. The Montana DNRC has also had to contend with unauthorized drones grounding its firefighting planes. “We’re following what’s going on very closely, and it’s shocking to us,” Lau went on. Leaving the skies clear so that firefighters can get on with their work “just seems like a no-brainer, especially when people are actively trying to tackle the situation at hand and fighting to save homes, property, and lives.”
Courtesy of U.S. Forest Service
Although the Super Scooper collision was by far the most egregious case, according to authorities there have been at least 40 “incidents involving drones” in the airspace around L.A. since the fires started. (Notably, the Federal Aviation Administration has not granted any waivers for the air space around Palisades, meaning any drone images you see of the region, including on the news, were “probably shot illegally,” Intelligencer reports.) So far, law enforcement has arrested three people connected to drones flying near the L.A. fires, and the FBI is seeking information regarding the Super Scooper collision.
Such a problem is hardly isolated to these fires, though. The Forest Service reports that drones led to the suspension of or interfered with at least 172 fire responses between 2015 and 2020. Some people, including Mike Fraietta, an FAA-certified drone pilot and the founder of the drone-detection company Gargoyle Systems, believe the true number of interferences is much higher — closer to 400.
Law enforcement likes to say that unauthorized drone use falls into three buckets — clueless, criminal, or careless — and Fraietta was inclined to believe that it’s mostly the former in L.A. Hobbyists and other casual drone operators “don’t know the regulations or that this is a danger,” he said. “There’s a lot of ignorance.” To raise awareness, he suggested law enforcement and the media highlight the steep penalties for flying drones in wildfire no-fly zones, which is punishable by up to 12 months in prison or a fine of $75,000.
“What we’re seeing, particularly in California, is TikTok and Instagram influencers trying to get a shot and get likes,” Fraietta conjectured. In the case of the drone that hit the Super Scooper, it “might have been a case of citizen journalism, like, Well, I have the ability to get this shot and share what’s going on.”
Emergency management teams are waking up, too. Many technologies are on the horizon for drone detection, identification, and deflection, including Wi-Fi jamming, which was used to ground climate activists’ drones at Heathrow Airport in 2019. Jamming is less practical in an emergency situation like the one in L.A., though, where lives could be at stake if people can’t communicate.
Still, the fact of the matter is that firefighters waste precious time dealing with drones when there are far more pressing issues that need their attention. Lau, in Montana, described how even just a 12-minute interruption to firefighting efforts can put a community at risk. “The biggest public awareness message we put out is, ‘If you fly, we can’t,’” she said.
Fraietta, though, noted that drone technology could be used positively in the future, including on wildfire detection and monitoring, prescribed burns, and communicating with firefighters or victims on the ground.
“We don’t want to see this turn into the FAA saying, ‘Hey everyone, no more drones in the United States because of this incident,’” Fraietta said. “You don’t shut down I-95 because a few people are running drugs up and down it, right? Drones are going to be super beneficial to the country long term.”
But critically, in the case of a wildfire, such tools belong in the right hands — not the hands of your neighbor who got a DJI Mini 3 for Christmas. “Their one shot isn’t worth it,” Lau said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that the Québécois firefighting planes are called Super Scoopers, not super soakers.
Plus 3 more outstanding questions about this ongoing emergency.
As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Friday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place?
Though fires are less common in California during this time of the year, they aren’t unheard of. In early December 2017, power lines sparked the Thomas Fire near Ventura, California, which burned through to mid-January. At the time it was the largest fire in the state since at least the 1930s. Now it’s the ninth-largest. Although that fire was in a more rural area, it ignited for some of the same reasons we’re seeing fires this week.
Read on for everything we know so far about how the fires started.
Six major fires started during the Santa Ana wind event last week:
Officials are investigating the cause of the fires and have not made any public statements yet. Early eyewitness accounts suggest that the Eaton Fire may have started at the base of a transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison. So far, the company has maintained that an analysis of its equipment showed “no interruptions or electrical or operational anomalies until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire.” A Washington Post investigation found that the Palisades Fire could have risen from the remnants of a fire that burned on New Year’s Eve and reignited.
On Thursday morning, Edward Nordskog, a retired fire investigator from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, told me it was unlikely they had even begun looking into the root of the biggest and most destructive of the fires in the Pacific Palisades. “They don't start an investigation until it's safe to go into the area where the fire started, and it just hasn't been safe until probably today,” he said.
It can take years to determine the cause of a fire. Investigators did not pinpoint the cause of the Thomas Fire until March 2019, more than two years after it started.
But Nordskog doesn’t think it will take very long this time. It’s easier to narrow down the possibilities for an urban fire because there are typically both witnesses and surveillance footage, he told me. He said the most common causes of wildfires in Los Angeles are power lines and those started by unhoused people. They can also be caused by sparks from vehicles or equipment.
At more than 40,000 acres burned total, these fires are unlikely to make the charts for the largest in California history. But because they are burning in urban, densely populated, and expensive areas, they could be some of the most devastating. With an estimated 9,000 structures damaged as of Friday morning, the Eaton and Palisades fires are likely to make the list for most destructive wildfire events in the state.
And they will certainly be at the top for costliest. The Palisades Fire has already been declared a likely contender for the most expensive wildfire in U.S. history. It has destroyed more than 5,000 structures in some of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Between that and the Eaton Fire, Accuweather estimates the damages could reach $57 billion.
While we don’t know the root causes of the ignitions, several factors came together to create perfect fire conditions in Southern California this week.
First, there’s the Santa Ana winds, an annual phenomenon in Southern California, when very dry, high-pressure air gets trapped in the Great Basin and begins escaping westward through mountain passes to lower-pressure areas along the coast. Most of the time, the wind in Los Angeles blows eastward from the ocean, but during a Santa Ana event, it changes direction, picking up speed as it rushes toward the sea.
Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the US Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles told me that Santa Ana winds typically blow at maybe 30 to 40 miles per hour, while the winds this week hit upwards of 60 to 70 miles per hour. “More severe than is normal, but not unique,” he said. “We had similar severe winds in 2017 with the Thomas Fire.”
Second, Southern California is currently in the midst of extreme drought. Winter is typically a rainier season, but Los Angeles has seen less than half an inch of rain since July. That means that all the shrubland vegetation in the area is bone-dry. Again, Keeley said, this was not usual, but not unique. Some years are drier than others.
These fires were also not a question of fuel management, Keeley told me. “The fuels are not really the issue in these big fires. It's the extreme winds,” he said. “You can do prescription burning in chaparral and have essentially no impact on Santa Ana wind-driven fires.” As far as he can tell, based on information from CalFire, the Eaton Fire started on an urban street.
While it’s likely that climate change played a role in amplifying the drought, it’s hard to say how big a factor it was. Patrick Brown, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, published a long post on X outlining the factors contributing to the fires, including a chart of historic rainfall during the winter in Los Angeles that shows oscillations between wet and dry years over the past eight decades.
But climate change is expected to make dry years drier and wet years wetter, creating a “hydroclimate whiplash,” as Daniel Swain, a pre-eminent expert on climate change and weather in California puts it. In a thread on Bluesky, Swain wrote that “in 2024, Southern California experienced an exceptional episode of wet-to-dry hydroclimate whiplash.” Last year’s rainy winter fostered abundant plant growth, and the proceeding dryness primed the vegetation for fire.
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Editor’s note: This story was last update on Monday, January 13, at 10:00 a.m. ET.