The raging forest fires in Southern California are a moment of reckoning, not just for people of that area or the US but for policymakers across the world. An exceptional mix of environmental conditions — an extremely dry winter and near hurricane-strength Santa Ana winds — has led to the firestorm. It’s worrying that Met agencies couldn’t predict these compound events in time. While, historically, droughts have been a common occurrence in California and are known to last several years, severe droughts have increased in the last decade. In February last year, however, after blizzards ravaged the US state, weather bodies predicted that California would remain drought-free for at least 2025. Ten months later, most parts of the state are reeling under extremely dry conditions — the US Drought Monitor’s latest map shows that nearly 60 per cent of the state is impacted by drought. In the first week of January, soil moisture in much of Southern California was in the bottom 2 per cent of the historical records of that period.

Year-to-year variability has always been a feature of California’s weather conditions. Experts believe that these have now turned to rapid swings between wet and dry conditions — hydroclimatic whiplash. The extraordinary wet winter of 2023-2024 was congenial for plant growth. But in a few weeks, large parts of California went from deluge to drought. The intense record-breaking heat dried out most of the vegetation and provided ample fuel for the wildfires. Santa Ana winds, too, are a part of the winter in the US state. But this year, they have surged with an intensity unmatched in a decade-and-a-half. Combined with the highly flammable materials that were used in the construction of houses — wood frames, for example — the dry and windy conditions were a recipe for disaster.