A person wears a hat while walking along the Strand in Redondo Beach, California, on 20 March 2026, during a heatwave. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
Associated Press
March’s persistent unseasonable heat was so intense
that the continental United States registered its most abnormally hot
month in 132 years of records, according to federal weather data. And
the next year or so looks to turn the dial up on global warmth even
more, as some forecasts predict a brewing El Niño will reach super strength.
Not
only was it the hottest March on record for the US but the amount it
was above normal beat any other month in history for the lower 48
states. March’s average temperature of 50.85F(10.47C) was 9.35F (5.19C)
above the 20th-century normal for March.
That
easily passed the old record of 8.9F set in March 2012 as the most
abnormally hot month on record – regardless of the month of the year –
according to records released on Wednesday by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).
The average maximum temperature for March was
especially high at 11.4F above the 20th-century average and was almost a
degree warmer than the average daytime high for April, Noaa said.
Six
of the nation’s top 10 most abnormally hot months have been in the last
10 years. This February, which was 6.57F above 20th-century normal, was
the 10th highest above normal.
“What we
experienced in March across the United States was unprecedented,” said
Shel Winkley, a meteorologist with Climate Central, a non-profit science
research group.
“One reason that’s so
concerning is just the sheer volume of records, all-time records that
were set and broken during that time period,” Winkley said. “But also
this is coming on the heels of what was the worst snow year. And the
hottest winter of record.”
April 2025 to March 2026 was the warmest 12-month period on record in the continental United States, according to Noaa.
On
20 and 21 March, about one-third of the nation felt unseasonable heat
that would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate
change, Climate Central calculated.
More
than 19,800 daily temperature records were broken for heat across the
country, according to meteorologist Guy Walton, who analyzes Noaa data.
More than 2,000 places set monthly records for heat – harder to break
than daily records – Walton calculated. That’s more March heat records
set just last month than in entire decades in the past.
All those broken records “tells us that climate change is kicking our butts”, said Jeff Masters, a Yale Climate Connections meteorologist.
“January
through March period was the driest on record for the contiguous US. So
not only was it hot, it was record dry as well,” Masters said. “And
that’s a bad combination for water availability, for agriculture, for
river levels, for navigation.”
The European
climate and weather service Copernicus and Noaa are both forecasting a
“super” strong El Niño to form in a few months and intensify into the
winter.
“A strong El Niño could plausibly push
global temperatures to new record levels in late 2026 and into 2027,”
Victor Gensini, a Northern Illinois University meteorology professor,
said.
A central part of the city was under threat as a new fire broke out in
the Hollywood Hills. Firefighters were already struggling to fight the
worst blaze in Los Angeles history, and more than 100,000 people were
under mandatory evacuation orders.
A new wildfire
broke out on Wednesday evening in the Hollywood Hills, an area of
central Los Angeles indelibly associated with the American film
industry, as emergency crews struggled against several other devastating
blazes that were raging out of control and forcing desperate
evacuations.
Even
though wildfires are a fact of life in the hills of Southern
California, the experience of watching one encroach upon a metropolitan
area left residents deeply unsettled and afraid.
The
60-acre Sunset fire, burning among the hiking trails and secluded
mansions of the Hollywood Hills, was zero percent contained as of 9 p.m.
local time. A mandatory evacuation order was in effect for a wealthy
area bordered by Mulholland Drive and Hollywood Boulevard, and an
evacuation warning extended west along Sunset Boulevard toward West
Hollywood and Beverly Hills.
The
street names evoke the grandeur and romance of the movies, and the
iconic “Hollywood” sign stands nearby, on the other side of the 101
Freeway.
As of
Wednesday evening, five people had died as a result of the wildfires,
more than 25,000 acres had burned, more than 100,000 people were under
mandatory evacuation orders and hundreds of thousands of customers had
lost power. Glowing embers were floating through the sky like lightning
bugs as thick black smoke turned day into night.
The
largest of the blazes is the uncontained, 15,000-acre Palisades Fire.
It has already consumed more than 1,000 structures, making it the most
destructive in Los Angeles history, according to Cal Fire, the state
fire agency.
About
16 million people in Southern California were under a red flag warning,
the highest fire-related alert issued by the National Weather Service,
by 9 p.m. on Wednesday. The agency said “extremely critical” fire
weather conditions — the result of strong winds and dry conditions —
were forecast to wane overnight. But conditions would remain “critically
elevated” through at least Thursday and potentially into Friday, it
said.
Here’s what else to know:
Other fires:
East of Los Angeles in Eaton Canyon, the day-old Eaton fire had reached
Pasadena and consumed more than 10,000 acres as of Wednesday night.
Another blaze that started on Tuesday, the Hurst fire in the San
Fernando Valley, had grown to about 850 acres. Read more about the three major fires.
Water availability:
A lack of water has hampered crews’ efforts to beat back the major
fires and several smaller ones The Los Angeles Department of Water &
Power said that the department had filled reservoirs across the city
before the windstorm. But with so many trucks connected to hydrants, and
no aerial support possible, the tanks were depleted.
Climate context:
Santa Ana winds are notorious for spreading wildfire, and they often
occur in colder months. By January, though, their impacts are usually
less dramatic, as the landscape is typically less flammable after rains
in the fall and early winter. But this year, the rains have not come, leaving most of Southern California extremely dry. Scientists have also found that fires across the region have become faster-moving in recent decades.
Yan Zhuang, Jacey Fortin, and Ken Bensinger contributed reporting.
A fast-moving wildfire erupted in Los Angeles county on Tuesday, quickly consuming nearly 3,000 acres and destroying homes in an affluent community along the Pacific Ocean.
Whipped
by unusually strong winds, the fire prompted frenzied evacuations
through winding roads in the Pacific Palisades, an area north of Santa
Monica, with residents fleeing on foot as flames approached.
Late
Tuesday evening, new evacuations were ordered in a different part of
Los Angeles for an unrelated blaze. The Eaton fire started around 6.30pm
PST in Altadena, at the base of the San Gabriel mountains, and quickly
grew to threaten homes. By 8pm it had burned 200 acres, according to the
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire).
A “life-threatening” windstorm is impacting a
large swath of southern California, fanning the destructive fires and
complicating early containment efforts. The region could be seeing the
strongest winds in more than a decade, bringing extreme fire risk to
areas that have been without significant rain for months.
Videos shared online from Pacific Palisades residents, including from the actor James Woods,
show flames licking homes through the canyons, thrashing trees blowing
in the winds and plumes of black smoke billowing into a cloudless sky.
As the fire rapidly spread, severe gridlock on narrow streets led many
to leave their cars, some which were subsequently engulfed in flames.
With ditched vehicles blocking first responders, authorities were forced
to use bulldozers to move cars.
The Palisades fire broke out around 10.30am and by
6.30pm had burned more than 2,900 acres, with the city of LA and the
California governor, Gavin Newsom, declaring a state of emergency. Tens
of thousands of people were under evacuation orders.
The blazes also reached the grounds
of the Getty Villa, an art museum by the Malibu coast. Some vegetation
on the property burned, but museum officials said no structures had been
impacted and that the galleries and staff were protected by a range of
prevention measures.
Southern California Edison shut off power to more than 28,000 customers as of Tuesday evening, according to the utility’s website. The shutoffs are meant to target areas where the conditions could lead to fires started by equipment.
The Los Angeles school district was also forced to relocate students from three campuses, Joe Biden had to reschedule plans for an event announcing two national monuments and movie premieres in Hollywood were canceled.
Actor Eugene Levy, the honorary mayor of Pacific Palisades, evacuated earlier on Tuesday, telling the Los Angeles Times while stuck in traffic, “The smoke looked pretty black and intense.” Other evacuees described harrowing escapes, one woman recounting to ABC7
how she abandoned her vehicle and fled with her cat in her arms: “I’m
getting hit with palm leaves on fire … It’s terrifying. It feels like a
horror movie. I’m screaming and crying walking down the street.”
The Palisades fire burns near homes amid a powerful windstorm in Pacific Palisades, California, on Tuesday. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Strong winds began hitting Los Angeles and Ventura
counties on Tuesday and were likely to peak in the early hours of
Wednesday, when gusts could reach 80mph (129km/h), the National Weather
Service (NWS) said Monday. Isolated gusts could top 100mph in mountains
and foothills. The NWS called the extreme event a “particularly
dangerous situation”, a rarely issued type of red flag warning, saying
it was “as bad as it gets in terms of fire weather”.
“The
worst and most severe part of this wind event is yet to come,” said LA
city council president Marqueece Harris-Dawson at a briefing around 4pm.
A
large area of southern California, home to millions of people, is under
what officials have described as “extreme risk” from the destructive
storm. The weather service warned of downed trees and knocked over big
rigs, trailers, and motorhomes, and advised residents to stay indoors
and away from windows.
Jeff Monford, a utility spokesperson, said it wasn’t always possible to give advanced notice to customers, telling the Los Angeles Times:
“This is a phenomenon of the increasing effects of climate change on
weather. We have more weather extremes that can change more quickly than
we might be accustomed to.”
Flames from the Palisades fire burn a home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, on Tuesday. Photograph: Eric Thayer/Getty Images
The winds will act as an “atmospheric blow-dryer”
for vegetation, bringing a long period of fire risk that could extend
into the more populated lower hills and valleys, according to Daniel
Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California, Los
Angeles and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
“We
really haven’t seen a season as dry as this one follow a season as wet
as the previous one,” Swain said during a Monday livestream, explaining
that the abundant growth of vegetation combined with a severe wind event
creates an elevated risk.
Newsom announced on
Monday that his office would deploy resources around the region to
respond to the storm, including moving fire crews and equipment from the
north, where the fire season has come to an end, to southern
California. He also secured assistance from the Federal Emergency
Management Agency.
“We
are no strangers to winter-time wildfire threats, so I ask all
Californians to pay attention to local authorities and be prepared to
evacuate if told to go,” the governor said in a statement.
The
Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, declared a state of emergency on Tuesday
evening, saying on Twitter the designation would help clear a path for a
rapid recovery.
The region has been
experiencing warmer-than-average temperatures, in part due to recent dry
winds, including the notorious Santa Anas.
Southern
California has not seen more than 0.1in (0.25cm) of rain since early
May. Much of the region has fallen into moderate drought conditions,
according to the US Drought Monitor. Meanwhile, up north, there have
been multiple drenching storms.
The fire risks
are particularly extreme in the charred area left behind by the
wind-driven Franklin fire in December, which damaged or destroyed nearly
50 homes in the Malibu area.
The blaze was one
of nearly 8,000 wildfires that together impacted more than 1,560 sq
miles (more than 4,040 sq km) in California in 2024.
The last wind event of this magnitude occurred in November 2011, according to the NWS, during which more than 400,000 customers throughout LA county lost power for days, and there was significant damage in the San Gabriel Valley.
Expect smoky air, thunderstorms and persistent heat as fire weather blankets SoCal
Southern California’s oppressive, record-breaking heat wave is awful enough on its own. But residents across swaths of the Southland now face a compounding threat: the massive Line fire in San Bernardino County, which is burning so hot that it has produced its own thunderstorms.
That’s
creating even more risks for communities in and near the San Bernardino
Mountains as regional officials warn of hazardous smoke, lightning
strikes, hail, strong winds and potential flash floods.
“Los
Angeles County and surrounding areas are under a red flag warning as
temperatures are expected to reach more than 100 degrees in some parts,”
my colleagues Teresa Watanabe and Colleen Shalby reported Sunday.
“The combination of high heat and humidity will bring a chance of
thunderstorms across the mountains of Los Angeles, San Bernardino and
Ventura counties, and the Antelope and San Gabriel valleys.”
Here are the basics as of this morning:
More than 20,500 acres have burned
The fire is 3% contained
More than 36,000 homes and other structures are threatened
1,855 personnel are assigned to the fire
Three firefighters have been injured
Evacuation orders
were in place for Running Springs and Arrowbear Lake, and evacuation
warnings were issued Sunday for Lake Arrowhead, Cedar Glen, Crestline
and Valley of Enchantment.
Fire officials said Sunday that their efforts had been challenged by erratic wind conditions, smoky air and limited resources.
Another
major complication for firefighters and everyone else: pyrocumulonimbus
clouds. The fire-triggered storm clouds produce lightning that grounds
firefighting aircraft and could spark more blazes. And these fire clouds
are forming more frequently, according to researchers.
“Hot and dry conditions mixed with thunderstorms are expected to challenge firefighters for the next few days,” they wrote on a public information webpage.
“Pyrocumulus
can cause additional complications when it comes to fighting the fire,
creating gusty and sudden wind shifts, along with large amounts of
[lightning] … and even rain,” officials noted on X this weekend.
That
led the NWS to issue several flash flood warnings, including for some
parts of Riverside, San Bernardino, Fontana and Rialto.
The
Line fire reportedly started in the city of Highland in an area where
tract housing meets the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains.
Areas like that, known as the wildland-urban interface, are highly prone to wildfires. The cause of the blaze is under investigation, but the point of origin brought to mind a conversation I had last month with Seth Mitchell, a deputy forest fire management officer with the U.S. Forest Service.
Mitchell
noted that, contrary to public perception, “the majority of wildfires
start on private land and move into forested areas,” not the other way
around.
Another wildfire sparked nearby Sunday
Firefighters faced a separate wildfire Sunday that broke out in the Angeles National Forest north of Glendora in L.A. County.
Dubbed the Bridge fire, it had burned 800 acres and was 0% contained as of Sunday evening.
Forest
visitors were being evacuated from the area, and several roads were
closed, including East Fork Road, State Route 39, Glendora Mountain Road
and Glendora Ridge Road.
Forest officials said firefighters were performing an “aggressive attack with air and ground resources.”
California faces an explosive fire season after a mild couple of years
We’re
at peak fire season in the West, and this year has been notably busy
compared with the previous two seasons, which were tempered by
back-to-back wet winters.
According to Cal Fire incident data, roughly 838,575 acres have burned so far this season. That’s more than in 2022 and 2023 combined.
Although fires are part of our forests’ natural ecosystem, human-caused climate change and roughly a century of flawed forest management
have greatly increased the risks that wildland fires will explode into
the massive infernos we’ve seen happen more frequently in recent years.
A helicopter flies as the Borel fire grows near Lake Isabella, California, on Monday. Photograph: David Swanson/Reuters
Park fire scorches 386,000 acres as firefighters battle blazes across US west, including historic mining town of Havilah
The largest wildfire in the US swelled to more
than 380,000 acres (154,000 hectares) on Tuesday morning, an area bigger
than the city of Los Angeles and three times the surface area of Lake
Tahoe, as thousands of firefighters battled the blaze in a remote
wilderness area in northern California.
Meanwhile,
the destruction caused by wildfires raging across the US west came into
sharp focus as photographers documented the destruction left by the
Borel fire in southern California. The fast-growing fire tore through the historic mining town of Havilah, leaving burnt buildings, cars and forests.
About 2,000 people were ordered to evacuate
because of the fire, which burned through the Sequoia national forest.
By Tuesday morning, the fire had torn through more than 57,000 acres
(23,000 hectares) and was 17% contained.
No fatalities have been reported.
A Klamath Hotshot finishes his shift as the Borel fire grows near Lake Isabella, California, on Monday. Photograph: David Swanson/Reuters
In northern California, more than 5,500 firefighters were working to contain the Park fire, the largest wildfire in the state this year, which has moved up the ranks to become the fifth largest in the state’s recorded history.
By Tuesday afternoon, the fire had scorched more than 386,000 acres, according to the California department of forestry and fire (Cal Fire). It has destroyed more than 190 structures and is threatening 4,200 more.
After several days of intense firefighting efforts, crews had reached 14% of containment on Tuesday morning amid cooler temperatures and more humidity, but the fire continued to burn very actively, Cal Fire said. With the steep terrain, wind activity and many areas inaccessible to crews, the fire is making uphill runs and spot fires continue to occur, the agency said.
The massive fire continues to burn through rugged, inaccessible terrain with dense vegetation, threatening to spread to two other counties. “That’s going to be a continued challenge for us moving forward over the next couple of days,” said Mark Brunton, an operations section chief with Cal Fire.
Cooler weather has helped firefighters stop the
blaze’s path near some communities like Forest Ranch, where some people
began returning to unscathed homes on Tuesday.
Christopher
and Anita Angeloni have lived in the community of 1,600 for 23 years,
and have had to evacuate several times due to wildfires, including the
2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 people and decimated the nearby town of
Paradise.
Christopher Angeloni said he
constantly worked on creating defensible space around his home and was
happy to return home nearly a week after evacuating to see his hard work
paid off.
“We were prepared to possibly lose everything,” he said.
Anita
Angeloni said it has been a stressful week. “We have not been sleeping
enough, very tense, praying all the time, teary eyes,” she said. “But
we’re here. We’ll see for how long.”
A helicopter drops water on the Borel fire. Photograph: David Swanson/Reuters
The man arrested on suspicion
of starting the blaze by pushing a burning car into a gully made his
first appearance in court on Monday and was charged with felony arson of
an inhabited structure or property.
Ronnie
Dean Stout was arrested at his home in Chico a day after the fire
started. Prosecutors said Stout had a previous criminal record and would
face life in prison if convicted.
The Butte
county district attorney, Michael Ramsey, told reporters after the
hearing that Stout said the incident was an accident, the Sacramento Bee
reported.
The district attorney said during a press
conference that Stout was seen drinking at a swimming hole in the area
before the fire started and drove “recklessly” through the area before
the car went over a berm. Witnesses reported hearing the sounds of an
engine revving and scraping.
“The indication
is he didn’t purposely light the car on fire because he was trying to
get out of being stuck on the edge of a berm,” Ramsey said, according to
KQED.
“We have another witness who saw dirt and smoke coming up, then
followed immediately by smoke. Then fire. There’s an extraordinary
amount of dry grass.”
A home and property are destroyed in Havilah as the Borel fire grows near Lake Isabella, California, on Monday. Photograph: David Swanson/Reuters
The Park and Borel fires are two of more than 100
blazes active in the US west. Evacuation orders were in effect on
Monday on 25 wildfires, according to the National Interagency Fire
Center. More than 27,000 wildland firefighters and support personnel are
deployed.
Some
blazes were sparked by the weather, with the climate crisis increasing
the frequency of lightning strikes as the western US endures blistering
heat and bone-dry conditions.
In Colorado, the
Alexander Mountain fire doubled in size between Monday and Tuesday to
more than 1,800 acres, according to the US Forest Service. The blaze,
about 12 miles (19km) west of Loveland, Colorado, where the Rocky
Mountains fold into the Great Plains, spurred mandatory evacuation
orders and produced a looming column of smoke that could be seen for
miles.
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