Western Wildfire Season 2021
The fingerprints of climate change were on the 2021 fire season - the second season in a row of devastating wildfires in the western US. Below average mountain snowpack, a series of early summer record-breaking heatwaves, and continued drought conditions contributed to the record-breaking season. California's Dixie fire is the largest single (non-complex) fire in California's history, and burned just under 1,000,000 acres – a mark only broken once in California’s history, just last year, by the August Complex Fire. Thanks to climate change, the western US is especially primed for fires to undergo rapid increases in coverage and intensity shortly after they start. This devastating wildfire season came to a close after an extremely powerful atmospheric river produced flooding rain in late October.