Eearly 1 000 000 acres (more than 40 000 km2) in California have been burned by 585 wildfires last 10 days, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) confirmed. Lightning storms sparked many of the fires. This includes nearly 819,000 acres burned in the Lightning Complex fires.
Only LNU and SCU Lighting Complex have reached at the weakend level of the second and the third biggest wildfires in California in all-time history.
Seven people have died so far. Tens of thousands have been evacuated, with nearly 700 homes damaged by the fires.
3 lighting complexes were created after “dry storms” during last week. These storms have brought only little precipitation amounts and almost any wind or rain damages, but strong lighting have initiated in extremely hot air hundreds of fires.
Moreover, coastal area is still bothered by severe winds. The combination of heatwave + dry lighting + winds caused, that soon will be wildfires in California the worst in United States ever.
With fires are fighting around 13 000 firefghters from Sunday to Monday, but they are larger and larger. Large parts of California and Southwest are these days bothered by unhealthy air quality with Carbon Dioxide (CO) from smokes.
According to projections, smoke from the fires will move above US, Canada and Atlantic ocean above Europe during next 5 days.
List of the 5 biggest fires / fire complexes on Sunday, 23.8.2020 in California:
LNU Lightning Complex
- Acres: 347,630
- Containment: 21 percent
- Fatalities: 4 civilians
- Structures threatened: 30,500
- Structures destroyed: 871
- Structures damaged: 234
SCU Lightning Complex
- Acres: 343,965
- Containment: 10 percent
- Fatalities: 0
- Structures threatened: 20,065
- Structures destroyed: 12
- Structures damaged: 5
CZU Lightning Complex
- Acres: 74,000
- Containment: 8 percent
- Fatalities: 1 civilian
- Structures threatened: 24,323
- Structures destroyed: 131 residential; 3 commercial
- Structures damaged: 11 residential; 1 commercial
Tehama/Glenn Lightning Complex
- Acres: 49,050
- Containment: 13 percent
- Fatalities: 0
- Structures threatened: 1,500
- Structures destroy: 2
- Structures damaged: 1
Butte Lightning Complex
- Acres: 4,278
- Containment: 40 percent
- Fatalities: 0
- Structures threatened: No estimate reported
- Structures destroy: 0
- Structures damaged: 0
Infographics of California fires topic :
Infographics sources:
https://www.insider.com/10000-lightning-strikes-spark-major-fires-in-california-2020-8
https://www.insider.com/map-of-wildfires-raging-throughout-northern-southern-california-2019-10
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/19/us/california-fires-power-outages/index.html
Mkweather warnings for Tuesday and Wednesday:
