California’s wildfire season is off to its worst start in 10 years.
Through Monday morning, 196,092 acres have burned across the state since Jan. 1 — an area seven times the size of San Francisco and more than double the average by July 9 of the previous five years — according to an analysis of federal and state fire statistics by the Bay Area News Group.
From the Oregon border to Napa County, Santa Barbara to San Diego, thousands of firefighters with helicopters, bulldozers and air tankers Monday battled hot temperatures and windy conditions at a time when, most years, summer fire season has barely begun.
The last time this much of California had burned by July 9 was in 2008, when a series of freakish dry lightning storms had burned three times as much: 627,000 acres, much of it in the remote back country of Big Sur.