Abstract

According to the dominant narrative, California has been experiencing a multi-year or long-term drought along with increasing temperatures that have exasperated or even been causative for a rash of forest and brush fires from 2010 through 2025. However, is this true? Long term precipitation records from San Francisco and Eureka along snow depth and water content from five stations placed at key headwater areas in the southern Cascades and Sierra Nevada were evaluated to see if climate change has really occurred, or whether California is simply more vulnerable to the inherent variation of its base Mediterranean climate which occurs in the context of population pressure, marginal growth in water storage and a massive accumulation of fuel stemming from long-term fire suppression that underpins a fire hazard exasperated by aging infrastructure and human caused fires.

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