Many of California's largest wildfires have been started by dry lightning strikes
Federal officials described them as the “fires of hell,” a “holocaust” that blackened 775,000 acres of timber and chaparral and produced miles-high clouds resembling a nuclear bomb blast., when two weeks of dry lightning strikes in late August and early September sparked thousands of wildfires in Northern California and Oregon, drawing an army of 19,000 firefighters.
But big fires ignited by storms that streak the skies with thousands of lightning bolts are nothing new.during high winds, many of the state’s largest recorded blazes have started with lightning strikes in the north or the Central Coast. There is likely more to come, given the forecasts of thunderstorms, dry lightning and wind gusts for the Bay Area on Sunday and Monday.Though the scale of the last week’s dry lightning strikes seems extraordinary, Cindy Palmer, a meteorologist in the Bay Area office of the National Weather Service, said it wasn’t that unusual.
That is especially true after an exceptionally dry winter in Northern California, and a heat wave that has parched wildland vegetation.
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