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Fall fires: something wicked this way comes
Dry fall weather and encroaching storms are bringing risky fire conditions to the North Bay.
SANTA ROSA, Calif. - Once a community experiences a destructive wildfire, it is always wary of the next threat of wind, heat and dryness; exactly what the Bay Area is experiencing now.
Santa Rosa's Fountaingrove neighborhood today is picturesque; a far cry from the day the wind-driven Tubbs Fire incinerated the area and Coffey Park in 2017. The fire burned 37,000 acres, killed 22 and torched 5,600 structures.
What they're saying:
Fountaingrove resident Liz Chamberlain is one of the few whose home survived the Tubbs Fire.
"Firemen came down and knocked down our fences on fire, knocked it down and we did lose a lot of our fruit trees, but that stopped from getting our house," Chamberlain said.
Today, still rebuilding, Fountaingrove is the poster child for groomed firebreaks and defensible space. And firefighters have remarkable new artificial intelligence sensors and detectors monitoring everything by the nanosecond.
Big picture view:
Still, weather can wreak havoc on the landscape.
"Right now, we're looking at three consecutive days of back-to-back pretty high temperatures, hot dry with some breezy conditions in the afternoon," said Santa Rosa Fire Marshall Paul Lowenthal.
And, later in the week, something wicked this way comes.
"Right now, our eye is on the tropical storm moving up out of the south. Thursday into Friday there is the potential for some of those thunderstorms to [generate] lightning, and then what we refer to as dry lighting, with the erratic winds with the dry conditions, there is the potential for ignitions of wildfires," Lowenthal said.
Like much of California, all the fuels from grass to thick brush and trees are very dry and getting drier. Whenever weather conditions signal Wildfire Watches or Red Flag Warnings, fire agencies "upstaff" with more crews and equipment.
"Right now, we have no reason to believe there's going to be any type of a wind event, and we hope we don't get a wind event like that this fall," Lowenthal said.
Chamberlain said, since the Tubbs Fire the days when the wind really starts picking up can rankle her nerves.
"Ever since then, I have a bag packed ready with essentials because we left with nothing," she said.
The greatest dangers as summer fades into fall? High winds and widespread lightning top the list.
The Source: Original reporting by Tom Vacar of KTVU