They Warned Us That June Would Get Windy, Hot, and Ready to Burn

[dropcap size=big]O[/dropcap]n Monday, the first fully hot ‘hot day’ of 2019, higher than usual temperatures were greeted as the unofficial start of summer and the summer fire season, although the weather wonks warned us in advance.

A 100-acre brush fire near the Six Flags theme park on Sunday in Valencia provided the first striking images of this season’s expected burning in a state of affairs that local authorities tell us is the “new normal.”

Temperatures topped 91 degrees in downtown Los Angeles on Monday, a palpable shift in L.A.'s weather after months of maddening days of cool, cloudy weather in Southern California, largely unchanged since December. Suddenly it felt terribly hot again in L.A., and heat is expected to linger through Tuesday.

County and state officials sought to remind Californians to take precautions and be prepared to evacuate their homes if instructed to do in the event of a major fire. Last year's fires killed dozens of people up and down the state, often without much warning. Be ready.

The National Interagency Coordination Center warned us in May of a higher than average fire risk for June and July, including warmer temps and winds. “Once warmer weather sets in, there should still be a substantial increase in fires [that] will probably be short term events with most of them being handled by local resources,” the state branch of the coordination group said in a June 1 report.

Remember, “we consider ourselves in fire season year-round now,” a Ventura County fire official told L.A. Taco during last season’s blazes. Also, 2018 is — until now — considered the worst fire year in state history.

RELATED: How to Stay Informed and Be Ready as Wildfires Burn in Southern California

In Northern California, temperatures soared past 100 degrees in several cities, bringing earlier-than-usual tweets of anxiety over the looming summer heat in the north. Right now fires are burning in Yolo, Yuba, and Sutter counties around Sacramento. Two smaller fires are burning in the Santa Clara Valley outside San Jose.

See the entire North and South California fire map here, updated by Cal Fire. Every fire recorded by the state year-to-year is listed here.

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