So California goes up in smoke every year now.

Although climate change can seem like this potential effect that might happen in the future, wildfires appear to be on the rise worldwide right now

Greece, Portugal, and America in the last couple of weeks - and big drought brewing in Australia - which will almost certainly mean a bad bushfire season here in the coming summer

The area of California that was on my short list for retirement has burned for the last three summers. Lake County, California, which includes Clear Lake. The map below shows just how much is burning near the lake right now. That's huge. I got this data from this shortened link: http://url.site25.net/71 .

In included the Bay Area in the screen grab for perspective and location.

Notice on the image under 'Active 2018 Incident', there's a list, then a note that says 37 more. 37 more active fires.

Lake County is beautiful. I've visited there many times. It looks like some property I used to visit has been consumed. But this is the third year in a row that Clear Lake has seen evacuations and pretty bad property damage. Well, shit.

It's something you have to consider if you're looking to buy a property. Anywhere that used to be prone to bushfires is now super-prone - until it all becomes a lunar scape then it's probably safe again

What's your theory on where's the best place to live geographically in the States (or elsewhere) in a climate changed world?

An update on the imminent fire threat looming in Australia which I expected to start in late spring - it's already started - in winter - which is nuts.

Fires near here today and a Total Fire Ban for this area tomorrow with big winds forecast

California is still burning

Is that area heading towards 'too dangerous to inhabit' or will things get so burned out there's nothing left to burn?

Where I am here I can see fires from my porch that have been burning for weeks - apparently they are deliberately lit by farmers for 'back burning' purposes. Controlled fuel reduction burning is ok but seems a bit late to be still doing it now - in Qld , which is more tropical, iI guess they figure they get enough rain to keep it under control - but I do wonder if they're factoring climate change into that traditional practice

Although we had decent rain a few weeks back there's been none since plus a full week of 38-40C weather and now the grass, after suddenly turning green from months of yellow, is turning.back yellow again

Another couple of weeks with no rain and then a 40 plus day with wind and those fires could easily explode

Unfortunately the only affordable areas of California, aside from the desert I suppose, are in fire prone areas. I was reading a story earlier today that quoted people who were evacuating as saying this was the 5th or 6th time they've evacuated in recent years.

Apparently the town of Paradise is completely gone: https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/11/08/camp-fire-butte-county-paradise/

Has to be an intense fire to wipe out a town - that only happens in Australia when there's a combination of big wind (usually 40-80kph), high 30's to 40's C, and a long preceding period without rain

Is that the conditions they're facing in California? As I recall, Nov is their windy season, right? And guess it's tinder dry coming at the end of summer

"At least 25 dead" according to media reports!

That's a lot for a bushfire. I understand that they can come on fast, but I'd be questioning the evacuation procedures given the death toll. It's not like fires in California are unprecedented.

Also not sure of the history of the fire - whether it was a fire that had been burning for a while then took off when conditions worsened or sprung up on the day. There have been situations in Australia where small fires burn for weeks then explode when the wind and temperature gets up - whereupon they spend millions of dollars throwing everything at it but still lose houses and lives. Would seem more sensible to look at the weather report and spend the million bucks putting it out before the horror conditions arrive.

This started at 6:30am or so and by noon the town was in trouble. Wind was gusting at 40mph, so it just took off immediately. It was apparently started by a faulty power transformer that was probably throwing sparks.

Apparently people were abandoning their cars and running out of town and there are miles of burned out cars along the side of the road. 6,700 buildings? Literally the entire town was burned to the ground, schools, homes, churches, stores, everything wiped out.

Yep, it's the windy season and drier than usual.

And this was Trump's first tweet after the fire (because it's the only way he can communicate):
"In his first comment on the massive wildfires, Trump tweeted Saturday “so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”

What a fucking asshole and an embarrassment. I can't imagine how such an insensitive statement affected those who lost everything.

https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/11/10/the-latest-camp-fire/

Here's what's on Wikipedia with regards to the timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018).

Over the years, a lot of people in academia have trashed Wikipedia, but where else do people go to collate such recent information in such an organized manner?

=======================

Timeline
The Camp Fire started at sunrise on Thursday, November 8, around 6:33 a.m. PST, near Pulga, California, near Camp Creek Road in Butte County, California. Soon after the ignition of the Camp Fire, initial attack firefighters were dispatched to a report of a brush fire under Pacific Gas and Electric Company power lines near Poe Dam on the Feather River. Arriving 10 minutes later, the first units on scene observed rapid fire growth and extreme fire behavior, due to low humidity and high winds in the area. (The National Weather Service had issued a Red Flag Warning for most of Northern California's interior, as well as Southern California through the morning of November 9.) They also reported that power lines were down.[11] Shortly after the fire erupted, the Butte County Sheriff's Office ordered the evacuation of Paradise.[12] Other locations were also issued evacuation orders, while others were issued evacuation warnings, and emergency shelters were established.[13]

Due to the speed of the fire, many residents of Paradise were unable to evacuate before the fire arrived. By 8:18 pm PST that day, the fire had burned 20,000 acres (8,100 ha) and threatened about 15,000 structures,[1] and wind speeds approached 50 mph (80 km/h), which allowed the fire to grow rapidly.[14] According to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Captain Scott McLean, "Pretty much the community of Paradise is destroyed, it's that kind of devastation. The wind that was predicted came and just wiped it out."[15] The Honey Run Covered Bridge over nearby Butte Creek, the last three-span Pratt-style truss bridge in the United States, was reported to be destroyed by the fire.[16]

By the morning of November 10, the Camp Fire was reported by CalFire to have grown to a size of 100,000 acres (40,000 ha) and was 20% contained.[2] By then, an estimated 6,713 structures had been destroyed by the fire.[17][18]

===================

More astonishing data:

"At 6:30 Thursday morning, a wildfire of astounding proportions and speed broke out in Northern California. Dubbed the Camp Fire, it covered 11 miles in its first 11 hours of life. A mile an hour might not seem fast in human terms, but it’s an extreme rate of speed as far as fires are concerned. At one point it was burning 80 acres a minute." (Emphasis added.)

"Consider that seven of the 20 most destructive fires in state history have burned just in the last year."

https://www.wired.com/story/the-terrifying-science-behind-californias-massive-camp-fire/

This started at 6:30am or so and by noon the town was in trouble. Wind was gusting at 40mph, so it just took off immediately. It was apparently started by a faulty power transformer that was probably throwing sparks.

Apparently people were abandoning their cars and running out of town and there are miles of burned out cars along the side of the road. 6,700 buildings? Literally the entire town was burned to the ground, schools, homes, churches, stores, everything wiped out.

40mph winds, dry conditions, and a faulty transformer throwing sparks - they are not words you want to hear in the same sentence

Whatever power company it was is gonna be in for a few lawsuits

That vision of burnt out cars on the exit roads is a feature of every major wildfire disaster. often happens that people are trying to escape, then there's a tree down on the road or a pile up coz of the visibility and then they're stuck

As you said, 6 of the most destructive fires have been in recent history? Seems the time has come to make adjustments for climate change in the now world, not just cutting fuel emissions for the future. I wonder if it's possible to build a fire-proof bunker in high risk towns? The way they have tornado shelters...

The oxygen would be problem coz a lot of people die of the smoke even before they get burnt - and I don't know how long it would take for a fire like that to go past to a point where you could emerge - but it's probably doable

I was a bit surprised when you posted that the rate of spread of the bushfire was only one mile per hour - would have thought it would be much faster. Found this on the Black Saturday fires in Australia, which was similar in terms of devastation to the Camp fire. Also includes some other frightening details such as how 'fire-balls' occur:

The rates of spread of the fires in forest equalled the maximum previously recorded on
“Ash Wednesday”, averaging 12 km/h for an hour in the case of the Kilmore East fire.
There was an exceptional run of fire in the Canberra fires of 2003 which spread at a rate
of about 26 km/h for an hour due to the “pull” of a major convection column on either
side of it. However, it was the extent and prolific spotfires that made the behaviour of
these fires unique. The very hot and dry conditions were conducive to keeping the
firebrands alight for longer than normal, and upper winds of around 100 km/h carried
firebrands and started spotfires up to 35 km ahead of the fire front. The previous
authenticated spotting distance was 30 km (Luke and McArthur, 1978).

The rate of spread of the fire for shorter periods of time would have been much faster
than the hourly average. Prolific short-distance spotting was occurring about 10
minutes before the arrival of the main fire, i.e. about one kilometre ahead of the main
front. Black smoke indicated that the burning efficiency of the fire was very poor due
to the air-fuel mixture being too rich to burn. This resulted in fire flares and what have
been described as “fireballs” where parcels of flammable gases released from the forest
fuels have been blown ahead or above the fire and when they have mixed with sufficient
air (oxygen), they ignite. This phenomenon could occur several hundred metres ahead
of the fire front.

Modelling of these fires, using PHOENIX RapidFire, indicated that
fires could have spread as fast as 60 km/h in grassland and 40 km/h in forest for one
hundredth of an hour – about half a minute. The fire then effectively moves in pulses
where several hundreds of meters of forest can be set alight and then it takes a few
minutes for the fuel to be fully incorporated into the fire and then it pulses again. The
rate at which these pulses move could be as fast as the prevailing winds, which in the
case of “Black Saturday” was 50 to 60 km/h.

Flames were observed to leap 100 m or more into the air. Radiation from the flame
would make survival within a distance of three to four times this flame height difficult
except for very short exposures. Flame temperatures would have been 900 to 1200o
C, depending on the amount of moisture in the fuels and the depth of the flames.

file:///Users/dulandrift/Downloads/Report%20on%20the%20Physical%20Nature%20of%20the%20V...

This I find horrifying, "The very hot and dry conditions were conducive to keeping the
firebrands alight for longer than normal, and upper winds of around 100 km/h carried
firebrands and started spotfires up to 35 km ahead of the fire front"

Does that mean the fire effectively jumps 35km? How is that possible? You could be home watching the evening news and not have a clue, then you're toast, literally.

I also thought 1KM/hour was slow, and I guess it is, but from the videos I've seen, the fire was on all sides of people. Maybe the terrain had something to do with it as well, being an area of canyons and hills.

From a personal perspective, it means we have to take that part of CA off our short list of places to go next. This is the third year in a row we would have had to evacuate had we moved to the place I had my eye on, which wasn't Paradise but was near where the fires were earlier this year. I can't imagine what those people who lost their entire town are facing. I mean, when a typhoon wipes out a house, at least there's still a community to fall back on while you rebuild, infrastructure like hotels, restaurants, stores. That town is gone.

"You could be home watching the evening news and not have a clue, then you're toast, literally.'

Apparently that's more or less what happened in the Black Saturday fires - killed 178 people. The stories were - "look! there's a fire up in the mountains" - then the next thing it was upon them

As you said, Paradise - a whole community and all it's historical institutions getting wiped out - that's heart breaking. Even the survivors have still got a whole lot more surviving to do to come to terms with that

Reliable year round rainfall has to be number one on your list when looking around for property these days - what fits that bill in the states?

With regards to rainfall, I'd say possibly the SE, Florida, Georgia... but then you have hurricanes to deal with. So perhaps the NE would be safer. The entire west, everything west of the Rocky Mountains, is fire prone now. The central states can have horrible droughts.

Here's a link to a recent list of missing persons from the Camp Fire. A friend of mine found his name on there. Of course, it could be somebody with the same name, but he used to live in Butte County.

https://www.buttecounty.net/Portals/24/CampFire/Web%20List%2011-17-18%201749%20hours.pd...