The wildfire season 'is coming quickly and it's coming earlier.'
That's the message from meteorologist Eric Kurth and the National Weather Service in Sacramento, California, as the state deals with a crippling drought and vegetation and grasses that are already beginning to brown.
'We are seeing record levels of dryness for this time of year. It's more like what we would see later in June than mid-April,' said Kurth.
He is concerned about this year's fire season on the heels of an extremely dry year in 2020, and the most active fire season that California has ever recorded.
Someone who gets up close to California's vegetation is Craig Clements. He's a professor of meteorology and director of the Fire Weather Research Laboratory at San Jose State University.