Camp Fire In NorCal Extremely Unusual - Not Just Huge; So Late In Season AND So Far North

The rapidly-spreading Camp Fire erupted Thursday and overnight effectively devastated the entire town of Paradise, home to 27,000 people northeast of San Francisco. First reported at 6:30 in the morning, by noon the fire was spreading an astonishing 80 acres per minute. As of Friday morning it had burned 20,000 acres.

“Pretty much the community of Paradise is destroyed, it’s that kind of devastation,” the AP reported CALFIRE Captain Scott McLean saying. “The wind that was predicted came and just wiped it out.”

Photos and video circulating online Thursday showed traffic jams surrounded by walls of fire and thick clouds as residents fled their homes. While southern California can expect fires this late into the season, it’s a rarity so far north. Powerful winds combined with very little rain in the past six months and low-humidity, has made for “unprecedented” conditions, Redding TV meteorologist Rob Elvington said.

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At the same time as the Camp Fire, some 75,000 homes were also evacuated due to the Woolsey Fire just north of Los Angeles. Spreading across 8,000 acres, the evacuations have been described as “unprecedented for the area,” LA Bureau chief Jon Passantino tweeted. At the same time, it took just 12 minutes for the Hill Fire — burning just 9 miles away from the Woolsey Fire — to jump Highway 101, consuming 10,000 acres. The full extent of the damage is still being assessed and as of Friday morning the fires were “zero percent contained.” The three fires, all fueled by intense seasonal winds, add to an already unprecedented fire season this year.

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https://thinkprogress.org/adding-to-historic-wildfire-season-california-suffers-three-rapid-growing-late-season-fires-f11c1b99f39f/