The sun arose under cloud cover Friday morning, the clear blue sky from the previous day replaced by a gradually emerging gray that was expected to grow darker as the weekend progresses.
For firefighters throughout the state, that color could not look more beautiful — it signals cold, wet weather that could help them rekindle their relationship with an offseason.
“What we really need are longer-duration (storms),” Cal Fire Battalion Chief Isaac Sanchez said. “We need longer-duration events, and then we need events that line up one right after that other.”
A storm that is expected to signal its arrival with some light showers Saturday before letting loose with with heavier rains Sunday through Tuesday is creating cautious optimism that fire crews may get some real relief: A few such systems could bring an official end to fire season.
As it is, a wet system that dropped about a quarter- to half-inch of rain in the Bay Area earlier this week also brought enough snow to the Sierra Nevada that Cal Fire lifted fire restrictions for the North Tahoe Fire District. The repealing of restrictions generally signals the end of a district’s fire season.
Other districts in the state will evaluate their situations, according to Sanchez, but all areas of the state need a lot more rain. The U.S. Drought Monitor, in data updated Friday, showed that nearly the entire state — 99.77 percent — was in a state of moderate or worse drought, while almost half of California was still in “extreme” or “exceptional” drought conditions.
“The weather conditions this year compared to last have things looking much better,” Sanchez said. “That said, we know where we live; we know what time of year this is, and we know that in no time, those easterly winds can kick up and things can change in an instant.”
The storm system this weekend will course slowly through the region, National Weather Service meteorologist David King said Friday. The North Bay coastal mountains are in the bullseye of its path and could get blasted with up to 2½ inches of rain, he said. That area is expected to receive at least 1½ inches.
“In the South Bay and Santa Clara Valley and East Bay areas, it will probably be closer to between a half-inch to three-quarters of an inch,” King said. “That said, there may be isolated areas within those places that could see an inch, inch-and-a-half.”
The storm also is expected to bring more snow. The weather service said they’re expecting at least 12 inches and perhaps as much as 4 feet in the Sierra during a 2-3 day period starting Sunday night.
“What we’re seeing with this rain and with this pattern is a really great sign,” King said. “It makes things feel positive as far as the fire concern. The concern obviously is what can happen three months from now.”
Fire officials said most of the vegetation considered low fuel has been saturated decently but that larger fuel vegetation such as trees remains dry and dangerous. Contra Costa Fire Protection District spokesman said that “conditions on the ground have been as dangerous as they’ve been the past three years.”
Given those conditions, fire officials also said they’ve been fortunate to make it through 2022 with fewer disasters than in previous years.
According to Cal Fire, crews have battled 7,211 wildfires in the state this year that have burned 362,351 acres, caused nine deaths, and destroyed 876 structures. The worst of those have included the Mosquito Fire in Placer and El Dorado counties (76,788 acres, 78 structures destroyed, two firefighters injured) and the McKinney Fire in Siskiyou County (60,138 acres, 185 structures, four deaths, seven injuries).
In 2021, wildfires in California burned 2.57 million acres and destroyed 3,846 structures, according to Cal Fire records.. The Dixie Fire in Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Shasta, and Tehama counties, burned nearly 1 million acres. Five other fires cut through huge swaths of vegetation: The Monument Fire in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest (223,124 acres); the Caldor Fire in El Dorado County (221,835); the River Complex in the Klamath National Forest (199,359); the McFarland Fire in Trinity, Shasta and Tehama counties (122,653), and the Beckwourth Complex in the Plumas National Forest (105,670).
A year earlier, fires burned 4.3 million acres in the state, killing 33 people and destroying 11,116 buildings, according to Cal Fire records. Cal Fire crews battled 8,648 wildfires that year.
“We are looking better than we were last year at this same time, and the year before that,” Sanchez said. “We had some really significant incidents last year and in 2020. And the conditions that created those basically lasted into the new year. We’re hopeful for this year, but we have to wait to see what happens.”
Local fire districts also are monitoring the severity of the storm to see whether fire conditions can be considered significantly safer. San Mateo County fire officials said they have no plans to lift restrictions no matter the outcome of the storm, but other Bay Area districts may not be so unyielding; Contra Costa Fire spokesman Steve Hill said the district may reduce its vegetation response to just one engine — down from five — if the East Bay county gets several days of good soaking.
“If things go as we expect them to go from the forecast, the end of fire danger is probably very near,” Hill said. “But we’re not prepared to say that unequivocally until the rain is here. We need some this week. But we will absolutely need some more.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com