Dry Lightning Threat Triggers Bay Area Fire Weather Watch Warning – CBS San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — With reminiscences nonetheless contemporary of the devastating lightning complicated fires of 2020, the Nationwide Climate Service has issued a hearth climate watch warning for the Santa Cruz Mountains and the East Bay and North Bay hills starting Sunday afternoon.

A climate system will likely be transferring by means of the San Francisco Bay Space from Sunday till Monday morning, carrying with it a possibilities of thunderstorm exercise.

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“Thunderstorms will likely be a mixture of dry and moist, however given how dry the fuels are any lightning strikes will likely be problematic,” the climate service warned. “The menace for thunderstorms diminishes Monday afternoon because the moisture strikes northward.”

Whereas the climate circumstances weren’t anticipated to be as extreme as within the fall of 2020, any lightning strike within the tinder-dry hills might spark a fast-moving wildfire.

In 2020, the area was coming off a extreme warmth wave that helped stoke the ferocity of the lightning storms. Over a four-day interval, greater than 12,000 lightning strikes have been recorded in Northern California. These lightning strikes sparked as much as 585 wildfires, burning greater than two million acres.

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Wildfires burned hundreds of properties, claimed dozens of lives and charred woodlands, forests and wine nation vineyards, leaving an unpleasant scare seen from house.

This yr a scarcity of rainfall during the last 9 months has led to extreme or excessive drought circumstances. There merely is not any moisture within the hills.

“Current sizzling and dry circumstances have created very receptive vegetation to new lightning fires,” the climate service warned. “New fireplace begins could mix with sturdy outflow winds to trigger a hearth to quickly develop in measurement and depth earlier than first responders can include them.’

Showing on the KPIX 5 Morning Information, Cal Fireplace Battalion Chief Jon Heggie mentioned his company was on alert.

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“We’re bringing in further workers,” he mentioned. “We’re getting ready previous to the occasion so we’re insuring we’ve all our assets in place and actually watching that climate carefully to insure we all know the place these fires have the potential for beginning.”