Wildfire season

California wildfire seasons becomes a ‘fire year’

California wildfire seasons becomes a ‘fire year’

Unlike hurricane season, there is no defined start and endpoint to wildfire season. In California, “wildfire season typically begins in July and runs through the first fall rainfall, peaking in Sept. and Oct.,” as explained in The Tufts Daily. Yet with increasing global temperatures, drought and other factors, wildfires now happen year-round in the U.S. The Forest Service coined this as a “fire year.” The shift from a wildfire season to the “fire year” is apparent from the recent Colorado Fire in California on Jan. 22, 2022 and the Marshall Fire in Colorado that started on Dec. 30, 2021. The Washington Post reported the Colorado Fire began in Palo Colorado Canyon and eventually burned around 1,050 acres of land. The Marshall Fire spread through 6,000 acres of the suburban Boulder County towns of Superior and Louisville, “destroying 1,084 homes and seven businesses and displacing over 30,000 residents,” according to the Daily Camera. Both fires occurred during times that are uncommon for wildfires in either state, as stated by KGW 8.