Northern California fires?

Question

I live in Newcastle, about 3 miles from Auburn and about 25 miles from Sacramento. I'm in the valley where all the smoke from these fires is. I saw a sattellite picture of this part of Cali on the news last night and you couldn't even see the ground for miles around cause it was covered with a blanket of smoke. What on earth is causing these hundreds of fires? It can't be from heat cause I've experienced much hotter summers here than this and this never happened.

Answer 1

real simple, nature ! fires,mud slides and eartquakes are part of the Ca. life.

Answer 2

The majority of these fires were caused by dry lightning (little or no rain). A few were man made - lit cigarette out the window, overheated car/accident near dry grass, arson... Unfortunately, a lot of the fires here in Northern California are in very steep, rugged, mountainous regions and it's very difficult for the firefighters to get to them. Even air drops are hampered by the smoke - it's too thick in some areas to fly in and drop water or fire retardant. The fires that are threatening homes are being dealt with first and fires that don't pose imminent danger to people and their homes will be taken care of asap. So... we're gonna have to deal with the smoke for a while longer.

Answer 3

Lightening Storms, I am from Redding and the smoke is bad here too! We were right in the center of the storm, little rain and lots of thunder and lightening, I actual saw a bolt of lightening hit the ground 20 ft away from me or so, at Ace Hardware and the thunder almost gave me a heart attack, it looks like we are going to get more dry lightening this week sometime, which means more fires........which means more smoke....

Answer 4

You should have heard by now, most of these fires were caused by lightening. We have them here too. They finally put one of them completely out, but it`s still very Smokey here in Fairfield CA, where Travis AFB is.