Important Takeaways:
- The Park Fire started Wednesday afternoon in a park and grew from about 6,400 acres late Wednesday night to 45,550 acres Thursday morning, then topped 164,000 acres — some 256 square miles — Friday morning, Cal Fire said. Containment had been at 3%, but it fell to zero percent.
- Cal Fire arson investigators have arrested a 42-year-old Chico man on suspicion of starting the blaze, Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey announced. Officials later identified the suspect as Ronnie Dean Stout II.
- His arrest followed reports of a man seen pushing a burning car into a gully at around 3 p.m. Wednesday in the upper part of Bidwell Park, where the blaze broke out, the district attorney said. The car slid 60 feet down an embankment and went up in flames completely, sparking the Park Fire.
- Ramsey said the man was then seen calmly leaving the area among other residents who fled as the fire rapidly grew.
- The Park Fire is currently the largest, but far from the only, wildfire burning in California. And farther north, in Oregon, the Durkee Fire grew so large and powerful it created its own weather.
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Important Takeaways:
- “This executive order directs state agencies to move urgently to address dangerous encampments while supporting and assisting the individuals living in them – and provides guidance for cities and counties to do the same,” Newson said in a statement. “There are simply no more excuses. It’s time for everyone to do their part.”
- Newsom’s executive order was buoyed by the US Supreme Court’s decision last month, which rejected arguments that ticketing homeless people for sleeping outside violates the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment.
- Chris Herring, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California Los Angeles, said “Before the Supreme Court ruling, cities were in the position where they would have to provide shelter offers before removing encampments,” “Now … they will be able to carry out these encampment sweeps with the very real threat of issuing people incredibly expensive fines of which people cannot pay and often results in a warrant or an arrest or can result in incarceration.”
- Herring said the timing of the order wasn’t surprising as Newsom seeks to “politically clear his name of the homeless crisis, especially as he’s in the national spotlight right now amid the presidential election.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The largest active wildfire in the United States has scorched almost 270,000 acres in eastern Oregon, as nearly 80 large active wildfires are burning in the US, including a California blaze that exploded in size overnight.
- California wildfire explodes in size overnight
- The Park Fire grew nearly 40,000 acres overnight to an area roughly the size of Washington, DC.
- The fire has burned an average of nearly 50 football fields per minute since it started Wednesday afternoon.
- Triple-digit temperatures and high wind gusts have fueled the fire’s growth.
- Oregon fires ‘scaled up quickly’
- The lightning-sparked Durkee Fire is the largest of 31 large wildfires currently burning across Oregon, which has been the hardest hit by fires in recent days.
- “We have been at this for a number of days, and those days just seem to keep getting harder and harder with the weather that we’re seeing in our area and the intense fire behavior,” Sarah Sherman of the Bureau of Land Management said in a video update.
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Important Takeaways:
- A dangerous heat wave will continue into midweek in much of the West as large wildfires burn out of control in several states, particularly California, Oregon and Washington.
- The heat wave has triggered warnings for millions in California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. In addition, red flag warnings are in effect in many areas for dangerous fire weather conditions.
- The National Interagency Fire Center was tracking 60 uncontained large wildfires as of Sunday afternoon, most of them in the Northwest and Southwest.
- Several have exhibited extreme fire behavior, which makes them more difficult for firefighters to control. The Durkee Fire in eastern Oregon burned nearly 60,000 acres on Saturday alone, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, bringing its total to more than 100,000 acres.
- In California, the Hawarden Fire burned homes in Riverside, about 55 miles east of Los Angeles, prompting evacuations.
- All-time temperature records have been set or tied in the Northwest Territories, with other milestones falling in British Columbia as well.
- Extreme wildfire events during the past two decades more than doubled in frequency and magnitude globally, with the six worst seasons occurring during the past seven years, a study published last month found.
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Important Takeaways:
- Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the first-in-the-nation law Monday, which bans districts from requiring school staff to disclose a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation to any other person without the child’s permission, with some exceptions.
- It also requires the state Department of Education to develop resources for families of LGBTQ+ students in grade 7 through high school.
- The law will take effect in January.
- At least six states have requirements that schools notify parents when minors disclose that they are transgender or ask to be referred to with a different pronoun, according to Associated Press reporting: Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
- Newsom spokesperson Brandon Richards said the new California law will “keep children safe while protecting the critical role of parents.”
- “It protects the child-parent relationship by preventing politicians and school staff from inappropriately intervening in family matters and attempting to control if, when, and how families have deeply personal conversations,” Richards said in a statement.
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Important Takeaways:
- The grid is stable right now, California ISO said, but it said events that linger for days can overtax generators and cause outages. The grid operator expects higher electricity demand on Wednesday and Thursday, with Thursday set to be the hottest day this week.
- “If weather or grid conditions worsen, the ISO may issue a series of emergency notifications to access additional resources, and prepare market participants and the public for potential energy shortages,” the ISO said.
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Important Takeaways:
- Things have gotten so utopian in the state of California, delivery drivers are being accompanied by armed guards due to “crime concerns” while out making deliveries.
- One company, Core Mart, has started hiring the guards to escort its drivers. Which means that somewhere, in a board room, it likely made more financial sense to pay for all new security staff than it did to continue to allow drivers to get robbed (and inventory lost) as was happening prior.
- San Jose police reported a slight uptick in delivery truck robberies two years ago, but no recent surge has been observed, NBC Bay Area reported.
- Retired San Jose police officer Darrell Cortez, now working in corporate and retail security, said:
- “Unfortunately, this is what society has become now with armed guards guarding merchandise from the retailer because there seems to be a sense of lawlessness in our society.”
- Cortez concluded:
- “It’s very unfortunate. You and I pay for it. The consumer pays for it on the backend because prices increase because the merchandise is going out the door and no one is stopping the bad guys because of the threat of violence.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Historic heat wave toppling all-time temperature records in the West
- Las Vegas has a chance to tie or break their all-time heat record of 117 degrees – for five consecutive days!
- Palm Springs, California reached a blistering 124 degrees Friday, the hottest temperature ever recorded in town, besting the previous record of 123 degrees set four times before, last done in 2021. That might sound more like temperatures expected in Death Valley, except that desert area reached 127 degrees, breaking its own daily heat record.
- Highs in the central California valleys are climbing into the 105-118 range, with temperatures even soaring well over 110 in inland Monterey County, whose western border is the Pacific Ocean. Sacramento has been over 105 for three straight days, while for Redding and Fresno, the temperature has reached 110 or more.
- Portland, Oregon, is looking at five consecutive days in triple-digit heat. Spokane is set to sizzle to 104 early next week. Even Seattle is looking at five straight days around or above 90 degrees — a rarity for summer.
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Important Takeaways:
- Death Valley will hit 130 degrees and could break world record amid blistering heat wave
- California’s Death Valley could reach a scorching 130 degrees next week and could come close to breaking its blistering world record as parts of the west, Southwest and Mid-Atlantic are under an intense heat wave forecast to intensify this weekend.
- The temperature at Death Valley National Park, which stretches between eastern California and Nevada, will reach highs around 130 degrees at Furnace Creek, Sunday night through Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service forecast.
- The sweltering heat could creep close to the world’s record highest temperature of 134 degrees marked at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley on July 10th, 1913, according to the National Weather Service office in Las Vegas.
- More than 50 cities from the Pacific Northwest to Arizona are expected to break record highs through Wednesday. Las Vegas may come close to breaking its all-time high of 117 degrees for five straight days next week from Sunday to Thursday.
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Important Takeaways:
- California is hit by ‘dangerously high temperatures’ of up to 117F as 13,000 are evacuated from fierce wildfires and 90million are under heat alert across country
- California is sweltering under ‘dangerously high temperatures’, with the mercury set to rise to 117F and thousands of people evacuated as raging wildfires grip the state.
- The severe heat is only expected to get worse during the Fourth of July holiday week for parts of the United States, with nearly 90 million people placed under heat alerts across the country.
- The torrid conditions have been caused by a ridge of high pressure just off the West Coast and a separate ridge that spawned heat warnings and advisories from Kansas and Missouri to the Gulf Coast states, according to the National Weather Service.
- California’s capital, Sacramento, is under an excessive heat warning expected to last until Sunday night, with temperatures forecasted to reach between 105 degrees and 115 degrees (40.5 and 46.1 Celsius). Meanwhile, Palm Springs is set to see 117F.
- The heatwave has created perfect conditions for wildfires, with red flag fire warnings issued across the state, with pictures showing the blazes tearing through forests and homes leaving a trail of destruction.
- About 70 miles (113km) north of Sacramento, crews have been working in scorching conditions to battling a wildfire in Butte County that forced the evacuation of about 13,000 people in and around Oroville.
- The blaze, dubbed the Thompson Fire, broke out before noon yesterday and sent up a huge plume of smoke as it swiftly grew to more than 3 square miles (7.7 square kilometers) by evening, with zero containment.
- Firefighters lined roads, trying to keep the flames from reaching homes as helicopters dropped water on the fast-moving blaze.
- California has had a spate of spring and early summer wildfires feeding on abundant grasses spawned by back-to-back wet winters. The largest current blaze, dubbed the Basin Fire, was 17% contained after charring more than 21 square miles (54 square kilometers) of the Sierra National Forest in eastern Fresno County since it was sparked June 26.
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