Mosquito fire surpasses 63,000 acres to become largest blaze in California this year
(NaturalNews) An estimated 65,700 acres of Northern California have been burned by fire this year, according to the Los Angeles Times. At least 9,300 acres have been burned in July, compared to the usual 6,500 acres burned throughout the summer. The fire season is now in its third month, and fires are expected to burn about 15,000 acres a day on average through November.
Here’s the latest as of July 22.
(LA Times)
July 4th
Fire consumes 1,300 acres near Laughlin, NV
(KSL.com)
The Bureau of Land Management released a new report stating that as of July 1, fires burning in the western United States have destroyed 2,760 square miles of land. That’s a larger area than the combined state of Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado and Utah combined.
That’s about half the size of the entire U.S. territory of Alaska, according to the LA Times.
The report notes that this is the first year that “wildfires have burned so large a portion of the continent.”
The largest fires in the past few years have burned more than 4 million acres, according to the report. The B.L.M. states that those fires have burned “more land per year than in nearly all of the previous 100 years combined.”
The report states that these fires are “pushing the U.S. farther and farther into a fire season that is becoming more intense and erratic.”
July 5
The largest fire of the year so far burned 3,900 acres near Laughlin, Nevada, according to the Las Vegas Fire Department.
“We got a lot of lightning,” said Battalion Chief Eric Soderstrom. “All of a sudden, we had a fire out there.”
July 6
Smoke billows over the smokey wildfires from