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<\/p>\nThe five-day heatwave that broke records across California and the West around March 19, with temperatures in the San Francisco Bay Area around an unseasonable 32 degrees Celsius, cooled down shortly after that to 21 degrees in many places.<\/p>\n
But the effect of the overall hot, dry month of March is likely to be felt all summer, experts say, through increased fire risk around the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cMuch of the West is experiencing the warmest temperatures ever recorded in March,\u201d says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources division. \u201cIt\u2019s really just kind of mind-boggling.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of folks say \u2018it gets hotter in July,’\u201d he adds. \u201cTypically, though, we don\u2019t consider summer weather to be normal in winter.\u201d<\/p>\n
The record heat this month has accelerated the drying of grasses and other vegetation around the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hills are starting to turn brown,\u201d says Craig Clements, director of the San Jose State University Fire Weather Laboratory. \u201cVegetation will dry further and quicker because of the heat. It\u2019s almost like we\u2019re in the middle of May, but we\u2019re in March.\u201d<\/p>\n
The heat has also decimated the Sierra Nevada mountain range snowpack, causing ski resorts like Dodge Ridge, Homewood, Badger Pass, and Sierra-at-Tahoe to close early for the season.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the statewide Sierra snowpack, the source of nearly one-third of California\u2019s water supply, was at 36% of its historical average \u2014 down from 76% on February 20.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re seeing an incredibly fast melt,\u201d says Andrew Schwartz, director of the University of California Central Sierra Snow Lab, near Donner Summit in the Lake Tahoe area. \u201cThe snow pack is leaving the hills really quickly. Stream flows are increasing. It\u2019s looking like we might melt out before April 1.\u201d<\/p>\n
State officials warned that the upcoming April 1 snowpack reading is likely to be the second-lowest since the 1920s, after only April 1, 2015. That year, it was 5% of normal, and former governor Jerry Brown famously held a news conference in a bare Sierra meadow and announced sweeping statewide water restrictions amid the third dry year in a row.<\/p>\n
This year, California is not in a drought. On March 19, the US Drought Monitor a weekly federal report, showed none of the state in drought conditions, following three wet winters. But the heatwave means that there won\u2019t be four wet winters in a row.<\/p>\n
A month ago, the snow was 2.4 metres deep around Schwartz\u2019s lab, which sits at a 2,101 metres-elevation just off Interstate 80. On Friday, it was just 0.6 metres deep, with patches of bare ground visible. Temperatures all week in the Sierra have been above freezing, even at night, with daytime Celsius highs in the 20s.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been nice having the warm temperatures up here,\u201d Schwartz says. \u201cPeople have been outside enjoying it. But the thing hanging over everyone\u2019s head is fire season.\u201d<\/p>\n
After those wet years, which led to fewer-than-normal acres burning statewide, fire experts are eyeing this upcoming summer season nervously, noting that unless California gets lucky with some late-season storms in April, this year\u2019s fire season will be longer and potentially more dangerous than usual.<\/p>\n
\u201cFire risk has been low across the state,\u201d Clements says. \u201cThis will start to change it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rains and healthy snow during the winters of 2022-23, 2023-24, and 2024-25 had profound benefits. They ended the previous drought and filled reservoirs around the state<\/p>\n
Full reservoirs mean water restrictions are not expected in California cities this summer.<\/p>\n
But they don\u2019t do much for fire risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could very well see a situation in parts of California with extreme wildfire risk conditions later this summer, especially in the forests, with above-average reservoir levels,\u201d Swain says.<\/p>\n
The Cal Fire Santa Clara Unit, which oversees wildfire response in Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, western Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties, has already begun boosting staffing levels, says Chelsea Burkett, a Cal Fire spokeswoman.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hasn\u2019t been as wet of a winter as we would have liked,\u201d she says. \u201cThat means we could start seeing fires occur sooner.\u201d<\/p>\n
This winter has been an all-or-nothing affair After a dry start, big storms pounded California between Christmas and New Year\u2019s. Then there was another dry period in January, followed by a second round of big storms in mid-February. And although rainfall levels in the Bay Area are close to normal, it hasn\u2019t rained in the Bay Area since March 2.<\/p>\n
The latest heatwave was caused by a very strong high-pressure system that emerged along the West Coast. It formed a heat dome, where a stagnant lid of hot air sank and was trapped near the surface.<\/p>\n
California has always had heatwaves. On March 19, Napa hit 33 degrees, breaking a record set in 1914, and San Francisco Airport reached 29, breaking a record from 1952. But climate change, caused by the burning of fossil fuels whose gases trap heat in the atmosphere, is making heatwaves and droughts more intense, scientists say.<\/p>\n
The 10 hottest years on record globally since 1850 all have occurred since 2015, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA.<\/p>\n
When the Sierra snowpack melts early, not only do the plants and soils dry out faster, but the reservoirs, once drawn down, aren\u2019t steadily replenished by snow that melts through the late spring and summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis type of winter is what we are going to see more of,\u201d Schwartz says. \u201cWe have had plenty of precipitation this year. But we have been in a snow drought. We can expect more years like that with climate change. A year like this was going to happen anyway, but climate change has made it worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
After record fires in 2020 and 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers have nearly doubled Cal Fire\u2019s fire protection budget from $2 billion to $3.8 billion since 2019, and increased staffing from 5,829 to 10,741 positions. They purchased helicopters that can drop water at night, added huge C-130 Hercules air tankers, and, with the University of California, San Diego, have built a network of more than 1,200 remote cameras on hilltops across the state to spot smoke and automatically notify dispatchers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe plan for every year like it is going to be the worst year,\u201d Burkett says. \u201cYou never know what is going to happen. We need to be prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A fire helicopter flies near a large amount of smoke from a California fire last year. The state has been stocking up on fire equipment, but with the unseasonably dry, hot weather this March, officials are worried about the 2026 fire season. Gene Blevins\/ZUMA Press Wire\/dpa<\/p>\n
![\"Yosemite,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/70de4f7d17a7050b0fbb7ad14610f018.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Yosemite, a popular tourist destination, is in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range – an area that has not received enough rain this year, worrying the state’s fire fighters Andrea Warnecke\/dpa-tmn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The five-day heatwave that broke records across California and the West around March 19, with temperatures in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[40490,7,9,8,54228,69728,10691,10610,106566,9321,40493,86559,5916],"class_list":["post-235799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-andrew-schwartz","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-daniel-swain","tag-drought-conditions","tag-fire-risk","tag-fire-season","tag-month-of-march","tag-sierra-nevada-mountain-range","tag-sierra-snowpack","tag-summer-season","tag-the-san-francisco-bay-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}