![]() Wildfires started by dry lightning in 2020 burned nearly 1 million hectares. Lightning clusters can ignite many points at once, often in remote places where it takes longer for anyone to notice the blaze, says Flannigan.Ĭalifornia has a particularly fiery history with dry lightning – during the “Fire Siege of 1987”, thousands of wildfires ignited by widespread dry lightning burned around 260,000 hectares. What 10,800 Bay Area lightning strikes sparking hundreds of wildfires in. What to do and not do during a thunderstorm with lightning strikes. Most fires in the US are started by people, but lightning can start more destructive fires. California lightning tips and background. He says the same approach to studying dry lightning could be used in other places where it poses a growing risk, including Australia, Siberia and Canada.įires are becoming more severe and frequent as climate change leads to drier vegetation, and lightning might also become more frequent with warming. The more detailed view of the meteorology behind dry lightning in California could help forecasters create early warnings for lightning-caused fires in the region, says Mike Flannigan at the University of Alberta in Canada. The researchers found that dry lightning also occurred as late as October, says Kalashnikov. The study found dry lighting occurred most often between July and August, though it was most widespread in terms of geographical area from June to September, when wildfire risk is highest. They then looked at the meteorological conditions on days with dry lightning, as well the locations of dry lightning strikes to identify patterns specific to California. Lightning is killing our forests – and it's only going to get worse Kalashnikov and his colleagues examined the meteorological conditions behind dry lightning in northern and central California, where nearly 30 per cent of the more than 5000 recorded fires since 1987 were started by lightning. The annual average was 27 fatalities from 2009-2019. has averaged 43 reported lightning fatalities per year over the last 30 years. This month’s lightning storms in the Bay Area and Southern California lasted less than 12 hours, compared to two days of strikes that triggered the August 2020 fire siege. ![]() Dry lightning poses a special risk for wildfire because there is no rain to put out any fires started by the strikes. According to the National Weather Service Storm Data, the U.S. “You need to have a hotter, drier, lower atmosphere,” says Dmitri Kalashnikov at Washington State University Vancouver. But if the thunderclouds form on top of a layer of hot, dry air, rain might not make it to the ground along with the lightning. Several of the days with the most widespread “dry lightning” in that period corresponded with three of most destructive wildfires in California history.Ī dry thunderstorm develops just like a normal one, with a warm updraft carrying moisture to higher altitudes where it forms clouds and lightning. In central and northern California, nearly half of the lightning strikes over the past 34 years occurred on days with very little rain. A wildfire burning in Klamath National Forest, California in 2022 ![]()
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