A wildfire in far Northern California that started around 2 p.m. Friday has grown to about 30,000 to 40,000 acres in less than 24 hours due to windy conditions and other extreme weather, officials said.
Evacuation orders were extended in west Yreka through Saturday evening, with evacuation warnings for all residents of the town west of Interstate 5.
The governor’s office estimated earlier Saturday afternoon that about 2,000 people were under evacuation orders because of the fire.
Officials said thunderstorms and unpredictable winds in the area have made it difficult to determine the trajectory of the fire, which is burning in the Klamath National Forest near the Oregon border.
“We still have thunderstorms in the area and that means lightning and choppy winds. I don’t believe we’re expecting a lot of precipitation,” Carolyn Quintanilla, public information officer for the Klamath National Forest, said Saturday afternoon. “Dry lightning is cause for concern.”
The fire was 1 percent contained by Saturday night, and fire warnings were in effect for the area Sunday and Monday.
“It’s been a crazy amount of time,” said Yreka resident Kiko Gomez, speaking by phone Saturday afternoon. “I feel a little nervous, not only for myself but for others.”
Gomez, who left Yreka Saturday night, said that after living in the area for more than a decade, this is the closest he’s ever been to a fire.
In a sign of its extreme behavior, the wildfire sent a 50,000-foot pyrocumulonimbus cloud — a plume generated by intensely burning fires — into the air, pushing smoke high above the clouds, climatologist Daniel Swain noted on Twitter.
Smoke from the fire was blowing northeast and was not expected to affect the Bay Area.
Siskiyou County Executive Brandon Criss, whose district is east of Yreka, said he has friends in town who are packing up and getting ready to leave. He said he could smell the thick smoke at his home in Dorris, south of the Oregon border.
“The fire has grown exponentially in the last short amount of time,” he said. He added that the Board of Supervisors will likely declare a state of emergency in the county during its meeting Tuesday.
There is no information on the cause of the fire. The emergency declaration from Newsom’s office would help cut red tape and expedite resources to the region, including potentially from other states.
Notable satellite imagery this morning in NorCal/OR. The #McKinneyFire erupted last night, generating a massive pyrocumulonimbus cloud ~50,000 feet tall (!!). You can see smoke at two different heights: most in the troposphere, but some (probably) injected into the stratosphere (!). #CAwx #CAfire pic.twitter.com/Ri7IKcsnk8
— Daniel Swain (@Weather_West) July 30, 2022
The area around the fire was under a weather watch until Monday as lightning was expected over dry vegetation. Two additional fires in Siskiyou County — the China 2 and Evans fires — also prompted evacuation warnings for more than 200 residents. The two fires merged earlier today and burned over 300 acres.
Crews from multiple agencies are battling the flames. Firefighters from the U.S. Forest Service are currently responding, but the California Incident Management Team, which coordinates agencies such as the Forest Service and Cal Fire, was to take over Sunday morning.
Siskiyou County Executive Ed Valenzuela, who represents Mount Shasta, said despite being miles from the fire, he could see the plumes of smoke from his backyard.
“Hopefully with the more moderate weather they will be able to handle it,” he said. “This is not the first rodeo. We’ve been through fires.”
Daniel Echeverria and Emma Talley are contributors to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: danielle.echeverria@sfchronicle.com emma.talley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @DanielleEchev @EmmaT332
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