Drought-Fueled California Rocky Fire Defies Efforts to Defeat It

At the New York Times, "California Fire, Aided by Drought, Defies Tactics to Defeat It":

LAKEPORT, Calif. — As firefighters on Wednesday embarked on their sixth day of battling the largest of the many wildfire s that have flared across the state, fire officials said that the Rocky Fire, which has grown to consume nearly 70,000 acres here in the northern reaches of wine country, is still nowhere near under control and may not be until perhaps Monday.

The Rocky Fire, which was impeded slightly by humid overnight conditions, has already defied firefighters’ expectations for how such blazes typically behave, and has crossed highways, and fire lines and other barriers meant to contain it. Feeding on tinder-dry terrain and woodlands that have been parched by drought, the Rocky Fire is now 106 square miles and has forced the evacuation of 1,480 people; about 13,000 have been urged to leave their homes.

More than 3,840 firefighters are deployed across the uneven landscape of several counties, including Yolo, Colusa and Lake. They are cutting back underbrush to make fire-blocking tracts, and dropping gallons of water and flame retardant from nearly two dozen aircraft that fly through the smoky sky. But the fire is still only 20 percent contained, according to fire officials, and the flames are surging with unusual speed.

“I’ve got 30 years in, and in the last 10 years I have seen fire behavior that I had never seen in my entire career,” said Capt. Ron Oatman, a public information officer for Cal Fire, the state firefighting operation, and a longtime wild-land firefighter. For example, he said, on Saturday the Rocky Fire grew by 22,000 acres, a plot of land that computer models indicated would take about a week to burn. But that plot was consumed in five hours.

In the last three years, rain levels in California have been 24 to 30 inches below normal, according to the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center, meaning the state has been missing about two years’ worth of rainfall. The drought has sapped moisture from underbrush and thick trees, dampness that would typically retard a fire.

“In this situation, we’ve had multiple years of precipitation deficit,” said Jeff Shelton, a fire behavior specialist who has been tracking the inferno for the firefighting operation. “In a single year, that can be bad on a short term, but when you stack multiple years together, there is a cumulative effect.”

The desiccated vegetation has become ideal fire fuel, Mr. Shelton said. “It’s potential energy, waiting for something to happen — and that’s exactly what we have.”

The situation has rendered even the complex computer programs the firefighters use here at the mobile command center in the County Fairgrounds in Lakeport into futile predictors of how the fire will burn...

More at that top link.

And watch, from CBS News 5 San Francisco: