Cool Summer Keeps California Fire Toll Below Average

Wildfires would normally have raged over more than 70,000 acres of the state by now, but losses have been one-tenth of the average in what firefighters have dubbed “the year that summer forgot California.”

The toll is 96% below last year’s acreage losses by this time, fire experts said Tuesday.

But officials caution that the weather could still turn hot, dry and windy just as the state heads into what typically has been the worst part of fire season--late August and early September.

“We’re not out of this yet. . . . We still have the worst potential for fire danger that we’ve ever seen,” said Karen Terrill, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The state has been spared by a low-pressure trough off the coast, said Milo Radulovich, a National Weather Service fire weather expert.

Much of California has experienced cooler than average weather in May, June and in early August, he said. Winds have been light and largely from the ocean, so they have contained more moisture than those from land.

Lightning, which has often set the state aflame in past years, has been accompanied by rain throughout much of the summer.