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and longer droughts, California’s fires often morph into megafires, and even gigafires covering more than a million acres.

U.S. wildfires have been four times larger and three times more frequent since 2000, according to University of Colorado researchers. And other scientists recently predicted that up to 52% more California forest acreage will burn in summertime over the next two decades because of the changing climate.

As California now heads into its peak time for wildfires, even with last year’s quiet season and the end of its three-year drought, the specter of megafires hasn’t receded. Last winter’s record winter rains, rather than tamping down fire threats, have promoted lush growth, which provides more fuel for summer fires.

Cal Fire officials warn that this year’s conditions are similar to the summer and fall of 2017 — when a rainy winter was followed by one of the state’s most destructive fire seasons, killing 47 people and destroying almost 11,000 structures.

It’s not just the size and power of modern wildfires, but their ca- bility of keeping the gun “affixed to the interior of the vehicle, or the weapon has to be tethered to the inside of the trunk.”

Woodland, Miller explained “only addresses keeping a firearm in the residence, it requires it be stored in a locked container or disabled with a trigger lock” while “the only difference between state law is with ‘long guns,’ the shotguns and the rifles.”

Miller said that Winters Police Department has reached out to Project Childsafe about getting gun locks provided to the city’s police.

Council member Carol Scianna noted that local gun ordinances on top of state laws “are worth discussing.” “If you’re going to have a gun, we need to stress how important it is to store them safely and make sure unintended consequences aren’t happening” and pricious behavior that has confounded fire veterans — the feints and shifts that bedevil efforts to predict what a fire might do and then devise strategies to stop it. It’s a dangerous calculation: In the literal heat of a fire, choices are consequential. People’s lives and livelihoods are at stake.

Cal Fire crews now often find themselves outflanked. Responding to larger and more erratic and intense fires requires more personnel and equipment. And staging crews and engines where flames are expected to go has been thrown off-kilter.

“We live in this new reality,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a recent Cal Fire event, “where we can’t necessarily attach ourselves to some of the more predictive models of the past because of a world that is getting a lot hotter, a lot drier and a lot more uncertain because of climate change.”

CalFire has responded by tapping into all the new technology — such as drones, military satellites, infrared images and AI-assisted maps — that can be brought to bear during a fire. Commanders now must consider a broader range of pos- voiced her support for ordinances similar to those of Yolo County.

Council member Jesse Loren also voiced her support for an ordinance in Winters regarding childsafe locks and other storage measures, with Mayor Pro Tem Albert Vallecillo echoing the previous sentiments.

Mayor Bill Biasi said his opinion is “it seems like the state law covers pretty much everything… if we went forward and put an ordinance in place, to me that’s not necessarily going to educate people…I think we could do that without an ordinance.” Council member Richard Casavecchia also opined that firearm safety ordinances aren’t enough of a problem to warrant the city’s resources.

In public input, resident Nick Walters said ordinances make him “think of the farmers” and questioned if sibilities so they can pivot when the firefront shifts in an unexpected way. The agency also has beefed up its ability to fight nighttime fires with a new fleet of Fire Hawk helicopters equipped to fly in darkness.

The state has thrown every possible data point at the problem with its year-old Wildfire Threat and Intelligence Integration Center, which pulls information from dozens of federal, state and private sources to create a minute-by-minute picture of conditions conducive to sparking or spreading fires.

“We’re enlisting cutting-edge technology in our efforts to fight wildfires,” Newsom said, “exploring how innovations like artificial intelligence can help us identify threats quicker and deploy resources smarter.”

Scientists say the past 20 years have brought a profound — and perhaps irreversible — shift in the norms of wildfire behavior and intensity. Fires burn along the coast even when there’s no desert winds to drive them, fires refuse to lay down at night and fires pierced the socalled Redwood Curtain, burning 97 per- these measures would unduly burden a community with so many farmers, as well as noting that new gun owners already have

Mary to pass a certain number of safety tests.

Mary Lou Rossetto, a member of Moms Demand Action and its lead for Yolo County as well as a former cent of California’s oldest state park, Big Basin Redwoods.

The changes in wildfires are driven by an array of factors: a megadrought from the driest period recorded in the Western U.S. in the past 1,200 years, the loss of fog along the California coast, and stubborn nighttime temperatures that propel flames well into the night.

Higher temperatures and longer dry periods are linked to worsening fires in Western forests, with an eightfold increase from 1985 to 2017 in severely burned acreage, according to a 2020 study. “Warmer and drier fire seasons corresponded with higher severity fire,” the researchers wrote, suggesting that “climate change will contribute to increased fire severity in future decades.”

“What we are seeing is a dramatic increase in extreme fire behavior,” Heggie said. “When you have a drought lasting 10 years, devastating the landscape, you have dead fuel loading and available fuel for when these fires start. That’s the catalyst for megafire. That’s been the driving force for change in fire behavior.”

See FIRES, Page 7 police officer and a hunter, stated that she “think(s) there are a lot of things we can do for education, but it’s really important that we have everything in place to keep people safe” and noted that unsecured guns can and do get stolen from trucks. Rossetto also added that Moms Demand Action was involved in all the state ordinances, and would like to work with Winters on education and safety to “make sure that it’s safe as possible for all people.”

Resident Kate Laddish also spoke in favor of ordinances, especially in residential areas. She noted that many of the local farmlands are unincorporated parts of Yolo County, making them already subject to the county’s ordinances, and ordinances wouldn’t affect how people transport guns on their own properties. She said these ordinances can be an opportunity to be proactive rather than reactive to tragedies and encourage a culture of responsible gun ownership in the community.

Vallecillo suggested crafting more specific ordinances for Winters rather than taking any as a template, and Scianna said that implementation of ordinances would likely be more effective if, and when, an education program on gun storage had been implemented beforehand.

Loren moved to bring the item back for discussion as well as for staff to develop a potential ordinance model based on the Yolo County ordinance. Scianna, Vallecillo, and Loren voted in favor, and Biasi and Casavecchia voted against. With the motion approved, city staff will begin work to develop a potential ordinance model and will return to a future meeting with the information.