This article first appeared in ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
I’m sitting here watching the fires north of the Pasadena, CA area, just waiting to see if they really rush down the mountain and into housing. It’s been smoked out here for a few days, and my wife and I were headed for camping before they closed all the USFS campgrounds on Monday. Anyone living around here already sees the effects of climate change, it’s pretty undeniable each year as we get more summer heat, less rain, and bigger fires. We really need a federal government that finally takes this seriously…it’s just one more reason the Republicans need to be moved out of the way so our government can actually work for the people again.
14 firefighters were overrun on the Dolan Fire yesterday at Nacimiento Station with three medevaced for severe burns. Temps topped out at 120F in San Luis Obispo, just down the road. SLO is right near the coast and that was the highest temp ever recorded there. Grim future for all of the West.
And IMPOTUS says you’re not raking your forests enough.
The election of 2016 was a tipping point, in more ways than one.
Stay safe…
Parts if not most of Australia will be unlivable due to intense heat and wildfires. We’re going to see mass extinctions in Australia because animals cannot survive extreme drought and heat. Also forests are not coming back in many cases because these fires are burning too hot and destroying the seeds that would eventually replenish the forests.
These fires are just one more catastrophe in a series of cascading climate emergencies occurring around the globe. The Arctic ice is near or at an all time low with extreme temperatures becoming the norm.
This will not end well for our grandchildren.
have a look at Colorado’s wonderful Labor Day adventure. this shit keeps on getting weirder and weirder.
The adventure, continued.
The Cameron Peak fire went from 12,000 acres on Friday to more than 100,000 over the almost 100º Labor Day weekend. @faydout and I were trading posts about the stifling smoke and ash. This is the view from my window this morning (snow, not ash).
“OK, No. 1, I wouldn’t talk about the planet,” he said. “That’s a very abstract idea.”
Dafuq? I’m generally pro-Jerry Brown, but…dafuq? Here, let me help you out, Jerry:
My heart goes out to all in the path of the fires, and to my TPM comrades especially. 
it went from actual 92f at 3pm to 47f by 11pm. on Labor Day. soon followed by your photo. brr. and no, this shit is not normal.
Not sure what was weirder, the Sepia Tone Saturday, or the 60+ degree temperature flip. From 95 degrees and full smoke pseudo overcast to snowing at 5500 ft. in 36 hrs. is just Bizarre. I’m just about 25 miles away from the Pine Gulch fire, which just broke the record for biggest fire in Colorado history, and the Cameron Peak fire was very much on pace to break that record, until it got hit with over a foot of snow yesterday, but it still might as it’s full in the beetle kill pines now.
Pretty elaborate Chinese Hoax if you ask Me.
the climate change deniers (it’s just weather) infuriate me. a pox on them.
I’ve heard that if you listen to Rush Limbaugh for more than 5 mins. in a row, you become allergic to science. And the Dr. of Blovinity and Bombast has been blovinating for almost forty years now…and here we are.
those Fox fuckers have turned on 40% of our country to alternative news.
Our daughter and son-in-law live in Eugene, OR. She’s keeping us posted about how entire towns are literally disappearing. “Fires in 2017 and 2018 crested the top of the Cascade Mountains but never before spread into the valleys below, said Doug Grafe, chief of Fire Protection at the Oregon Department of Forestry.”
We have extended family who live up Waddell Creek between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay. The entire valley was on fire.
The mind boggles at how much worse things would be if climate change were not a hoax.
Not yet, anyway.
Emmer effing 2020.
Edited to add:
Coastal San Diego resident here. Little fire impact here. The air doesn’t smell smoky and isn’t affecting our breathing, but the light outside is several shades more orange than it should be.Sunrises and sunsets are amazing, but it is hard to think of them as beautiful.
We did have a scare last night when government alerts on our cell phones warned of high winds for the next 24 hours that could quickly turn any tiny fire into a monster. We were told that anyone in the county should be prepared for quick evacuation. I can only imagine how terrible it has been for those who have had to evacuate.
There’s a voice in my head asking: “So, what are you going to do about it?”
It has a Swedish accent.
It’s not ending well for us right now.
The primeval redwood and seqouia forests of the West Coast have withstood thousands of years of fiascos. But that was with mean temp and humidity levels changing up and down slowly. It’s coming on so fast now—a nanosecond in geologic time—that we will probably lose them before many of us die. It’s not real until your house and pets, and maybe even your spouse, are charcoal, it seems.
In 1979 I argued with engineering students about this all the time. Their belief that wonderful technological fixes would be developed as needed was impenetrable.
