With Los Angeles still recovering from the devastating fires that killed at least 30 people and destroyed thousands of homes, California’s residents are being warned that the summer, typically the worst season for wildfires, could be especially brutal this year.
Every summer across the state, the atmosphere dries up and the temperatures turn warm, sucking moisture from the landscape and turning the parched vegetation into kindling, ready to burn under the right conditions. This year, forecasters are already seeing signs that the pattern could be more intense than usual.
The snow in the Sierra Nevada, the frozen reservoir that moistens the landscape through the spring, is nearly gone; it melted off earlier than normal. This year’s grass crop is plentiful, especially in Northern California, which received more rain than the southern part of the state, and it’s already fueling fires as it dries out. And forecasters predict the summer will be exceptionally hot.
All of this adds up to a higher probability of more large wildfires than usual this summer, with the possibility that even the smallest spark could explode into a significant wildfire if not stopped quickly.
“The thing with wildfires is it could be the hottest summer on record, but to have fires, you need ignitions,” said Dr. Dan McEvoy, a regional climatologist at the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno, Nev.
In addition to a tough weather forecast, firefighting efforts face a new challenge this year: cuts to the federal agencies that assist with firefighting, prevention and recovery, including the National Weather Service, the U.S. Forest Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Tim Chavez, an assistant chief with Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency, said that even before this year’s sweeping changes, part of President Trump’s efforts to remake the government work force, some federal agencies were “struggling to keep their engines staffed.” If the staffing shortage worsens, he said, Cal Fire expects it will have to take up the slack on fires burning on federal land that are usually managed by the Forest Service.
“That impacts our ability to respond to our own state responsibility fires,” Mr. Chavez said. “There’s no doubt about it, especially when it comes to aircraft and crews, which is always the first thing you run out of.”
Wildfire season in California is year-round.
In a changing climate, wildfires in California went from a seasonal hazard to year-round catastrophes, but the peak, when fires are most abundant and the most acres burn, is still June through October.
Several small fires have already raced across the rolling hills of Northern California, where the healthy grass crop dried out this spring as temperatures warmed up.
Last month, the Inn fire burned in the Eastern Sierra foothills outside Yosemite National Park, threatening Mono City.
“This fire activity in the Eastern Sierra kind of worries me,” Mr. Chavez said. “I can’t remember a fire in the Eastern Sierra that went up the mountains like that one did. Usually they burn through the river bottom and stay in the flats, and once they get on the slope, they kind of go out.”
More fires, and much bigger ones, are expected in the months ahead. By September, officials predict fire activity across most of the state will be above normal this year.
In the last 10 years, the total number of acres burned by significant wildfires has varied from year to year. In 2020, when dry lightning sparked an outbreak of wildfires across Northern California, more than 4.3 million acres burned, but in 2022 and 2023, only about 300,000 acres burned each year. On average, about 1.4 million acres burn a year.
The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is a crucial data point for the summer wildfire outlook. A robust snowpack delays wildfire season, but a meager one, like this year’s, accelerates it. Most locations melted off several days to weeks earlier than usual because of warm, clear days in spring, and snow remained only at the highest elevations into June.
Weather models forecast that temperatures from July through September will fall within the warmest 20 percent of recent summers, according to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“This summer looks to be pretty high in the record books, and that has some significant implications for fire season,” Mr. Swain said.
When the heat waves break down, winds are expected to pick up, fanning vegetation and drying it out even more and spreading any fires that have started.
“I’m expecting this summer to be the year of wind and heat,” said Brent Wachter, a fire meteorologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Redding, Calif.
This year’s summer wildfire forecast is very different from last year’s.
It can be difficult to predict wildfire activity.
In 2024, officials predicted the summer would bring below-normal wildfire activity to some areas, in part because the snowpack was robust after a wet winter and expected to provide relief well into summer. Long-term forecasts at the time suggested below-normal temperatures.
The forecast didn’t pan out.
“We basically had a two-week-long heat wave event at the start of July, which is unprecedented,” Mr. Wachter said.
The heat set up the conditions for the Park fire, which tore through 430,000 acres in the wilderness of Northern California in August, becoming the fourth largest wildfire in state history.
Mr. Wachter said the prolonged heat waved dried the landscape in what he calls a “flash drought” and set the stage for a fire of that size in a summer when reservoirs were full after a wet winter.
“If it just was a three-day heat wave event, the likelihood of that fire exploding that quickly in a short amount of time, just in a few days, I just don’t think it would have been that way,” he said.
Mr. Wachter anticipates that this summer will bring more flash droughts, intensifying existing drought conditions in Southern California after a dry winter and creating drought conditions in Northern California.
“I think flash drought is going to be one of the buzz words this summer, and that’s mainly from the heat waves being more extended,” he said.
Amy Graff is a Times reporter covering weather, wildfires and earthquakes.
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