A wind-driven wildfire broke out late Friday in the rugged mountains above Big Sur, forcing residents to evacuate from their homes and authorities to shut down a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway.
Taylor Korn, a lifelong Boulder, Colo., resident, had already lost her father and grandmother this past summer. Then a wildfire took her home and two dogs.
Local officials said three people were still unaccounted for after the most destructive wildfires in Colorado history. Authorities also raised the count of homes destroyed to nearly 1,000.
Officials call it a miracle that there've been no reports of deaths in the blazes, which destroyed at least 500 homes — and perhaps twice that number. In some cases families had just minutes to flee.
More containment on the fire near Lake Tahoe means that some residents have been able to return, but a rash of new "suspicious" fires erupted over Labor Day weekend, officials say.
An estimated 50,000 people have been evacuated as the Caldor Fire rages on. Shelters are filling up and hotel rooms are hard to find, leaving evacuees struggling to cope with the uncertainty.
Smoke from forest fires in Siberia also has stretched to Mongolia, Canada and Greenland. The fires are already an unusual occurrence for a region known as one of the coldest places on the planet.
The wildfire tore through Greenville, a town dating back to the Gold Rush Era, in the northern Sierra Nevada. The wildfire is currently the largest in California.
The town of Lytton, British Columbia, caught fire and was completely evacuated Wednesday, just one day after setting a new all-time Canadian heat record with a high of 121 degrees Fahrenheit.
The fire had burned 2,877 acres with just 13% of it contained as of Wednesday. Emergency crews are watching for a return to hot and dry conditions at the end of the week.
Could smoke carry disease-causing microorganisms? "It's a very new idea to think of smoke as having a living component," says Leda Kobziar, co-author of an article that explores this theory.
2020 and 2016 are virtually tied for the hottest year on record. That means more powerful hurricanes, more intense wildfires, less ice and longer heat waves.
The Oregon school district hardest hit by wildfire is scrambling to create some normalcy and hold classes online. It's unclear how many families can participate since so many are displaced.
A huge wildfire shut down a portion of a cross-country interstate highway for two weeks. Now, in a ripple effect of the fire, the newly treeless area is vulnerable to flash floods and landslides.
