Daniel Swain in Slate: A “Heat Dome” and Drought Are Threatening to Ignite the West

Wildfires erupted this past weekend across 10 states—including California, Colorado, Arizona, and Oregon—as record-high temperatures continue to bake many areas in the West and Southwest United States. “It’s not only unusual for June, but it is pretty extreme even in absolute terms,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, told NPR.