California Water year ends, fire season ending with below average acres burned

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - With a good start to the 2022 Water Year, it looked like Lake Tahoe and the rest of California might escape another big fire season. With a very wet October and record snowfall in December, hopes were high. But that hope was shortlived after the driest January-February on record in the state, and a continuation of similar conditions in March.

The water year runs from October 1 to September 30, but with climate change and an extremely dry landscape across the west, the official fire season has changed. CALFIRE is getting away from what was called "fire season" and is now leaning toward a "fire year."

What the wet start in Water Year 2022 did was benefit the growth of grasses but they quickly dried out with a lack of rain in the midst of another consecutive drought year, causing concern for a big fire season.

But that didn't develop, giving many areas a break from what had been a summer commonality - smoke.

As of October 23, 2022, California had far fewer acres burned in fires than in years past:

2022 Combined YTD (CALFIRE & US Forest Service)-7,095 fires, 362,232 acres
2021 Combined YTD (CALFIRE & US Forest Service)-7,881 fires, 2,496,034 acres
5-Year Average (same interval) - 7,140 fires, 2,094,293 acres

The five-year average 2015-2019 was 7,915 fires with 1,059,051 acres burned.

The 2021 fires burned 3,629 structures and it was the largest fire year on record. 2020 fires destroyed 10,488 buildings and it was the second-largest fire year on record for California.

Of the 32.1 million acres of forestland in California, approximately 2.1 million acres (6.6 percent) burned in wildfires between 2002-2011. In the following decade (2012-2021), that figure more than tripled to 7.9 million acres (24.7 percent), according to data from Wildfire Today.

"The weather was in our favor last year," said South Lake Tahoe Fire Chief Jim Drennan. "There were no red flag days. Like with our winters, sometimes we were slammed, sometimes none at all. We are seeing bigger swings in weather than were in the past."

Drennan's fire crew didn't leave the Lake Tahoe Basin to provide support on other fires as often this year and the National Weather Service (NWS) in Reno only sent meteorologists to fires a few times.

Lake Tahoe residents enjoyed a warm September in 2022, but that was forgotten quickly as temperatures started dropping rapidly, then the much-needed snow started falling. Starting Saturday, a smaller storm is forecast for the area, but on its heels is a Sunday-Wednesday storm that is colder, and could bring much more snow than what was seen this week.

NWS Reno said fire season is slowing for the Sierra, but it could come to an official end with next week's storms.