WildfiresWhat to Expect from Wildfire Season This Year and in the Future

Published 3 July 2019

The new normal for Western wildfires is abnormal, with increasingly bigger and more destructive blazes. Understanding the risks can help communities avert disaster. Throughout Western North America, millions of people live in high-risk wildfire zones thanks to increasingly dry, hot summers and abundant organic fuel in nearby wildlands.

The recipe for disaster is simple. Throughout Western North America, millions of people live in high-risk wildfire zones thanks to increasingly dry, hot summers and abundant organic fuel in nearby wildlands.

This year, the National Interagency Fire Center is predicting a heavy wildfire season for areas along the West Coast from California into Canada due to a heavy crop of grasses and other plants that developed in the wake of a wet winter. In California, the largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, has already begun fire hazard-prevention power cut-offs that will likely affect hundreds of thousands of customers in the months ahead. Meanwhile, insurance claims for wildfires that devastated parts of California this past November recently topped $12 billion – a total that represents the state’s largest-ever economic loss from fire.

Chris Field, the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences and School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences; Rebecca Miller, a Ph.D. student in Stanford’s Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources; and Michael Goss, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Stanford School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, discussed with Stanford News’ Rob Jordan  what to expect from the 2019 fire risk. Field is a climate scientist whose work includes a project, in collaboration with the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford, that examines wildfires’ effects on respiratory illness. Miller studies wildfire protection and prevention policy, as well as federal, state and local wildfire preparations and responses. Goss’s research has included investigating the role of climate change in enhancing the risk of weather conditions associated with extreme wildfire danger.