It feels deeply weird to not be covering this year's wildfire season. A few things that I've learned over the years - learn from my mistakes.

It's not especially useful to discuss number of fires, especially year over year because there will be a ton of variability /1

compare instead to historical averages. How much is average? How does it compare to the worst fire year?

Number is also just one metric. Where are those fires? How big are those fires? /2

This matters because IIRC the biggest fires tend to happen in summer. But they're not where people live. If a fire happens in a forest and nobody lives near it, it's fine.

The fall late summer/fall fires are the worst b/c they are in populated areas /3

My above pun aside: not all fires are in forests. Lots are in grasslands. Also in Chaparral (this is of course geared towards non-Californians. Californian's please ignore me).

Fire isn't bad, it's a normal part of lots of ecosystems especially western ones. Framing all fire /4

as bad is actually incredibly harmful to prescribed burning efforts - and if people don't support prescribed or controlled burns... you get more fires.

Learn a few things about fire behavior. Under "normal" circumstances fire moves faster up a slope than down it /5

But sometimes - like during the Carr Fire - it will move as fast downslope than up it. Changing fire behavior is generally seen as a climate signal. /6

Also this: The Mendocino Complex Fire burned from early July to end of November.

Also I am completely blanking on which fire didn't fully extinguish until like December or January of the following year. https://twitter.com/jackcushmanjr/status/1296192875416485891?s=20

Never forget about the climate link. always mention it. The reason I knew in March it was going to be a bad fire year is because the fire scientists told me so (talk to them).

But also because spring was dry AND hot. What moisture fell didn't stick around. /8