The Scarface Fire was reported at 8:14 p.m. on Saturday in Siskiyou County, California, burning on private land. [1] Its cause is under investigation. Its containment is unknown. What is known is that it is the latest in a cluster of early-season wildfires — the Walker Fire, discovered March 27 on federal land and still burning a week later; the Quartz Fire on April 4; and the April 10 blaze at Bruce's Towing in Yreka, which destroyed fifty-three impounded vehicles and prompted a shelter-in-place order for the Hiram Page neighborhood. [2][3]

California has logged approximately 500 wildfires and 2,000 acres burned through the end of March. The five-year average for the same window is 734 fires and 13,700 acres. The fire count is down; the acreage is startling in the other direction. When a state logs a third of its normal burn area by April, the landscape is still waiting for ignition. The paper's lead drought story named the Palmer Index at its highest March value since 1895; its snow-drought brief argues the water crisis is already locked in. The fire season follows the same logic.

The Crown Fire in Acton, the Springs Fire in Moreno Valley and the Jurupa Valley fire on April 15 did not stay in the news cycle long enough to fix the pattern. Siskiyou County — a place that has lost more acres per capita than anywhere in the Lower 48 over the past decade — is the fourth notable California fire in seventeen days. The Shasta-Trinity National Forest's planned Mount Shasta prescribed burn, a hazard-reduction operation on one hundred ten acres, had to be pre-positioned for a narrow weather window. [4] The first hot week of May will find a Cal Fire division that entered April already in mid-summer posture.

-- DARA OSEI, London