Daniel Swain in Inside Climate News: A Siege of 80 Large, Uncontained Wildfires Sweeps the Hot, Dry West

As fires spread into Washington, Oregon and Montana, the arrival of the Santa Ana winds means more conflagrations for California. “It’s not just the size of the fires, but the distribution,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of California, Los Angeles. “There are big fires burning throughout the West at the same time. Right now the fire resources are completely maxed out.”