Educational Science

Here's Why the Ventura Wildfire Is So Explosive

A disastrous combination of tinder-dry vegetation, the strongest Santa Ana winds in a decade and a spark caused a wildfire to explode in Ventura County, California, north of Los Angeles, overnight Monday (Dec. 4). Less than 24 hours later, the blaze had torn through more than 45,000 acres and destroyed...

How Do Wildfires Start?

As the smoke settles from 2018's fires at the close of the year, it serves as a stark reminder of the raging wildfires that have plagued California and the rest of the American West. More than 8.5 million acres (34,600 square kilometers) burned this year, according to the National Interagency...

Multiple fires in California produce plumes of smoke that are visible to satellites. (Image credit: CIRA)Plumes of dense, gray smoke rise from deadly wildfires burning across multiple locations in California, in a striking animation of satellite images shared online Tuesday (Oct. 10) by the Cooperative Institute for Research in the...

In Photos: Devastating Wildfires in California

The Camp Fire (Image credit: NASA Worldview, Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS))In the early morning of Nov. 8, 2018, a wildfire broke out just outside Paradise, California, engulfing the town in black smoke. The town's 30,000 or so residents were quickly evacuated, according to NASA's Earth Observatory....

California Wildfires Signal the Arrival of a Planetary Fire Age

Another autumn, more fires, more refugees and incinerated homes. For California, flames have become the colors of fall. Free-burning fire is the proximate provocation for the havoc, since its ember storms are engulfing landscapes. But in the hands of humans, combustion is also the deeper cause. Modern societies are burning...

California's Spreading Wildfires: What Are Katabatic Winds?

While the cause of 21 separate wildfires blazing across eight counties in northern California remains unknown, their rapid spread is tragically familiar. Many of California's fiercest wildfires occur in September and October, owed in part to a powerful seasonal weather pattern known as katabatic winds — an annual threat that...

Mendocino Wildfire Becomes California's Largest, and It's Still Growing

California is battling its largest wildfire ever recorded, along with 15 other major ones across the state. The Mendocino Complex Fire is actually two separate fires, both of which began burning in late July: the Ranch Fire and the River Fire. They haven't merged yet, but they are close enough...

California Wildfires Rage in Astronaut Photos from the Space Station

The wildfires raging across California are a sight to behold from 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have taken dramatic new photos of the dangerous and destructive blazes, which are blackening huge swaths of the Golden State and throwing off smoke that billows...

A Whole Lot of the Planet Is on Fire Right Now

A whole lot of planet Earth is burning right now. In the U.S., record-setting wildfires in Western states dominate the headlines. But as a new image released by NASA's Worldview satellite imagery collection reveals, those fires represent just a fraction of the total portion of the planet that's dominated by...

Wildfires Blaze in Northern California (Photos)

Multiple fires (Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty)Today (Oct. 10), in California, firefighting efforts continued against multiple wildfires that began on the evening of Oct. 8 and quickly spread to consume 115,000 acres, causing at least 13 deaths, hospitalizing over 100 people, and forcing an estimated 20,000 people to evacuate, the New...