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Watching Los Angeles Burn
Fires are common, but the wildfires burning through Los Angeles' neighborhoods are unprecedented.
Wildfires are on the horizon when the warm Sage-scented Santa Ana winds blow across the Los Angeles basin toward the Pacific Ocean, prolonging the summer months into late September. The fire season intensifies in autumn when the Santa Ana's whip the Mojave Desert air through the canyons, over the San Bernadino and San Gabriel Mountains, and across the coastal Chaparral, turning sagebrush into explosive fuel.
Angelinos expect fires, but the wildfires roaring through the urban neighborhoods, incinerating over 10,000 homes and businesses, are unprecedented. Earth has been 1.5 ºC warmer for 12 consecutive months, and the consequences are unpredictable but assured. We were warned extreme weather events would become more frequent, intense, destructive, and unavoidable, but the apocalypse is unimaginable until its reality.
“Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.” — Magnets
Our detachment from the environment has made us so delusional that we cannot comprehend nature's capabilities and humanity's vulnerabilities. Today's extreme weather events…
