Cars and homes destroyed by the Dixie Fire line central Greenville on Thursday, 5 August 2021, in Plumas County, California. Photo: Noah Berger / AP Photo

Wildfire explodes to third-largest in California history – “We’re seeing truly frightening fire behavior. We really are in uncharted territory.”

By Daisy Nguyen and Noah Berger 6 August 2021 GREENVILLE, California (AP) – A Northern California wildfire that is now the third-largest in state history had burned for weeks, mostly in remote wildland areas with few people, before it roared through the little mountain community of Greenville, driven by shifting winds and bone-dry vegetation. Eva […]

A firefighter works on the Dixie Fire in California, 22 July 2021. Photo: InciWeb

Evacuations ordered after two California wildfires converge into one

By Maria Caspani 25 July 2021 (Reuters) – Crews and officials battling a large fire that has incinerated more than 190,000 acres (77,000 hectares) in northern California braced for the possibility on Sunday that smoke columns could spawn lightning storms capable of igniting more blazes. The swarming Dixie fire in Butte County, north of Sacramento, […]

A woman collects water from a puddle in the dried Manambovo river bed in Tsihombe, Madagascar, 2 May 2021. Photo: Viviane Rakotoarivony / UN / REUTERS

UN says 400,000 are approaching starvation in Madagascar amid back-to-back droughts – “This is not because of war or conflict, this is because of climate change”

UNITED NATIONS, 26 June 2021 (AP) – The U.N. World Food Program says southern Madagascar is in the throes of back-to-back droughts that are pushing 400,000 people toward starvation, and have already caused deaths from severe hunger. Lola Castro, WFP’s regional director in southern Africa, told a news conference Friday that she witnessed “a very dramatic […]

Satellite view of the Great Salt Lake on 24 September 2011 and 9 July 2021. Photo: ESA / Sentinel 2 / NASA Worldview / LANDSAT 5

Great Salt Lake is shrinking fast – Scientists demand action before it becomes a toxic dustbin – “We’re on the doorstep of a catastrophe”

By Lucy Kafanov, Leslie Perrot, and Eliott C. McLaughlin 17 July 2021 Great Salt Lake, Utah (CNN) – Great Salt Lake is also known as America’s Dead Sea — owing to a likeness to its much smaller Middle Eastern counterpart — but scientists worry the moniker could soon take new meaning. Human water consumption and […]

A truck driver who hauls fire equipment watches as the Sugar Fire, part of the Beckwourth Complex Fire, burns in Doyle, California, on 10 July 2021. Photo: Noah Berger / AP Photo

California and other parts of the West broil and burn in third 2021 heatwave – “Do not stop and take pictures”

By Christopher Weber 12 July 2021 (AP) – Firefighters working in searing heat struggled to contain the largest wildfire in California this year while state power operators urged people to conserve energy after a huge wildfire in neighboring Oregon disrupted the flow of electricity from three major transmission lines. A large swath of the West […]

Lake Mead, a lifeline for water in Los Angeles and the West, tips toward crisis – “This place is unrecognizable”

By Jaaweed Kaleem and Thomas Curwen 11 July 2021 LAKE MEAD, Nevada (Los Angeles Times) – Eric Richins looked out from his pontoon boat to the shallows on the lake’s western edge. He squinted and paused as if he had come upon a foreign shore. For the first time in a career navigating the waters […]

Aerial view of the charred remnants of homes and buildings in Lytton, B.C. that were destroyed by a wildfire on 30 June 2021. This photo was taken a week later, on 6 July 2021. Photo: Jennifer Gauthier / REUTERS

Residents to tour remains of Lytton as wildfires continue to burn across British Columbia – “Nothing about this feels real”

9 July 2021 (CBC News) – Residents of the B.C. village virtually destroyed by a fast-moving wildfire last week will be allowed to survey the damage for the first time Friday as part of a bus tour. The Thompson-Nicola Regional District organized the tour of Lytton to allow residents to see the aftermath of the […]

Map showing Excessive Heat Warnings beginning 9 July 2021 for the entire Sacramento Valley, northern San Joaquin Valley, the foothills, and mountains up to ~ 6,000 ft. The hottest days are Saturday and Sunday, with many Valley communities approaching or exceeding 110°F, locally 115°F. Graphic: NWS Sacramento / Twitter

Third heatwave in 2021 building across Western U.S. – “Confidence is very high for a dangerous heatwave to persist through Monday and maybe into Tuesday”

By Matthew Cappucci 8 July 2021 (The Washington Post) – Last week, a “thousand-year” heatwave baked the Pacific Northwest and adjacent British Columbia with widespread highs topping 100 degrees, resulting in a death toll in the hundreds. Lytton, Canada, climbed to 121 degrees and established new national records three days in a row before the town burned […]

Anomalies of 2021 highest daily maximum temperature (TXx) in Western North America, assuming the rest of the summer is cooler than the June 2021 heatwave. Note that some stations do not have data up to the peak of the heatwave yet and hence underestimate the event. The black box indicates the study region. Data: GHCN-D downloaded on 4 July 2021. Graphic: Philip, et al., 2021 / World Weather Attribution

Western North American extreme heat in 2021 virtually impossible without human-caused climate change

7 July 2021 (World Weather Attribution) – During the last days of June 2021, Pacific northwest areas of the U.S. and Canada experienced temperatures never previously observed, with records broken in many places by several degrees Celsius. Multiple cities in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington and the western provinces of Canada recorded temperatures […]

Map showing the 30-year summer temperature increases for the continental United States, 1991-2020. Data: Provided by Atmospheric and Environmental Research/Verisk in July 2021. “The ridiculous temperatures in the Pacific Northwest may on one hand be considered a black swan (ultra-rare) event, but on the other hand are totally consistent with multi-decadal trends,” says meteorologist Judah Cohen. Graphic: Judah Cohen / Atmospheric and Environmental Research / Verisk / AP

Summer swelter trend: U.S. West gets hotter days, East hot nights – “Hotter summers for the broader region are here to stay”

By Seth Borenstein 4 July 2021 (AP) – As outlandish as the killer heatwave that struck the Pacific Northwest was, it fits into a decades-long pattern of uneven summer warming across the United States. The West is getting roasted by hotter summer days while the East Coast is getting swamped by hotter and stickier summer […]

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