2016 California wildfires

In 2016, a total of 7,349 fires had burned an area 669,534 acres (2,709.51 km²) in California, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Climatologists had predicted an extreme version of El Niño, known as a Super El Niño, to occur during the winter of 2015–16. Although the Pacific Ocean’s warming water had been expected to bring strong storms to parts of the southwestern United States, actual precipitation totals generally underperformed those expectations. Early in 2016, The National Interagency Fire Center predicted that conditions from May through at least August would put much of the western United States in above-normal wildfire danger.

Events

In June, the United States Forest Service estimated that over 26 million trees had died across 760,000 acres (310,000 ha) in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This brought the number of dead trees to over 66 million during the past four years of drought.

On August 15, the National Interagency Fire Center showed the state leading the nation in the quantity, size and intensity of wildfires. A day later, on August 16, San Bernardino County announced that nearly 85,000 people were evacuated because of the Blue Cut Fire near Cajon Pass. Authorities arrested a 40-year-old man in connection to the Clayton Fire, and charged him with 17 counts of arson.

Fires

Below is a list of all fires that exceeded 1,000 acres (400 ha) during the 2016 California wildfire season, as well as the fires that caused significant damage. The information is taken from CAL FIRE's list of large fires, and other sources where indicated.

See also

• List of California wildfires
• 2005 Labor Day brush fire
• 2016 Fort McMurray Wildfire
• 2014 California wildfires
  • May 2014 San Diego County wildfires

References

External links

• California current incident information from CAL FIRE Archived February 20, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
• California wildfires on the US Forestry Incident Information System (InciWeb)
• 2016 California Fire Map (Calfire/Google Maps)