Daniel Swain in Washington Post: ‘Extremely dangerous’ fire threat in West after historic weekend heat while the Rockies await freak snow

After one of California’s hottest weekends ever observed, a severe fire threat encompasses much of the state and expands over large portions of the western United States. Yet, in a shocking example of weather whiplash, parts of the Rocky Mountain states are bracing for a 60-degree temperature drop and accumulating snow within 48 hours of triple-digit heat. The weekend blazes pushed the area burned in California to more than 2 million acres, the most burned on record in a single wildfire season since modern records began in 1987, even before the most dangerous part of the fire season had begun, according to Daniel Swain, a climate researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles.