Interestingly I went to do some statistical analysis of # of fires and acreage burned to see how this year and last year stacked up compared to prior....suprise surprise they stopped posting data after 2016 to this site:
http://www.fire.ca.gov/fire_protection/fire_protection_fire_info_redbooks
I was able to pull # of fires from Wikipedia for 2017 and it does indicate the # is at the very top end of the range with 9133 in 2017 vs an average of 8145 since the year 2000. There are 5 years over 9000 and 2017 is in the top 3.
Average acres burned for large fires blew through the roof in the past 2 years with 404626 acres in 2017 and a whopping 875654 acres so far this year vs an average of 203879 from 2000-2016. The only year that comes even close is 2007 with 566688 acres. What’s also really odd is the average acres took a step function increase in 2017 compared to 4 prior years where the average was 75992 acres for large fires.
I could easily see that with the dems taking congress in 2006 they decided to let things burn more to cover for sending more money cali way.
opp... spoke to soon... was able to find ca.gov data for 2018 at a different web page:
http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_statsevents#2018
# of fires is still within the average but again the average is off the charts.