Updated at 7:07 p.m. ET on Sept. 15, 2020.
To understand the ravenous wildfire season in the American West this year, boil some ravioli. Put the heat on high. After about 10 minutes, the pasta will go limp and start to break apart. Keep boiling. When the pot holds a shallow puddle of water and a pile of soggy debris, keep going. Don’t turn down the heat until the last bubbles of water sizzle and vanish. Then—and only then—the lump of ravioli will start to singe and burn and smoke.
Water, when heated, “wants” to evaporate; it will turn to gas before allowing most solids suspended in it to heat beyond the boiling point. This principle, readily observable in the kitchen, has recently doomed forests stretching from California to Washington State. One of the hottest, driest summers on record has led to a barrage of “megafires” that have killed at least 35 people, burned nearly 5 million acres, and destroyed thousands of homes and buildings.
The expansive forests of the West, in other words, spent months boiling off. Now they are burning.
Read: The West has never felt so small
In the past few months, one in every 33 acres of California has burned. This year is already the most destructive wildfire season, in terms of acreage affected, in state history. In 2018, during California’s last annus horribilis, I noted that six of the 10 largest wildfires in state history had happened since 2008. That list has since been completely rewritten. Today, six of California’s 10 largest wildfires have happened since 2018—and five of them have happened this year.