daniel swain-sq

Headline |

Daniel Swain in SF Gate: ‘Fuels are record dry’: Weather Service warns of wildfire risk with high winds in forecast

The end of February typically isn’t the time to worry about wildfires in the San Francisco Bay Area, but amid an unusually long dry spell in the middle of winter, the National Weather Service is warning of fire risk Sunday through Monday. Most of Northern California is now running below 50% of average precipitation since the start of the rainy season on Oct. 1. In some places, this represents a cumulative deficit of 15 to 20 inches, or even more, of missing rainfall, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.