California faces year's first wildfire just weeks after historically wet winter

LOS ANGELES: Firefighters on Friday combated the state's first big wildfire of the year in wild foothills east of Los Angeles hardly five weeks after the last episode of hefty rain and snow in California's historically wet winter.

According to the US Forest Service, the Nob fire has scorched some 200 acres of scrub and grass in the San Bernardino National Forest since flaring on Wednesday, with 25% of the blaze's circumference held by Thursday night.

Agency spokesperson Lyn Sieliet said that the fire posed no immediate risk to populated parts as it burned abrupt terrain deep in the timbers. The cause of the fire was under probe.

The fire was slim compared with nightmare blazes that have become more regular and severe in recent years, scorching hundreds of thousands of acres, devastating whole neighbourhoods and causing mass evacuations.

Still, it marked the first blaze of the 2023 season measuring 100 acres or more, signalling the potential for extreme wildfire activity this summer and fall. Experts have warned that this winter's bountiful rainfall prompted heavy growth of grass and scrub that will dry out by summer, leaving a larger, thicker fuel bed for wildfires.

The glut of precipitation, however, also has increased the moisture content in shrubs and trees, making them more flame-resistant in the short term and helping forestall the onset of the fire season.

By April 2022, three years into a crippling drought, California had already tallied over a dozen major wildfires, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing data from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire).

The latest fire in San Bernardino County came as low-lying communities in central California braced for possible floods from the rapid runoff of melting snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Forecasters said a warming trend hastened a spring thaw following a spate of Pacific storms that pummeled California with torrential rains and mountain snow from late December until late March.