Images taken from space show vast plumes of smoke billowing from the wildfires burning on the outskirts of Los Angeles, filling the air with particulate pollution.
The Line Fire in San Bernardino County threw out so much smoke and heat that it generated “fire clouds”—also known as pyrocumulus or flammagenitus—in the sky above it, which were snapped from space.
The smoke from this fire, as well as from the Bridge Fire and Airport Fire nearby, have wreaked havoc on the air quality between the eastern edge of L.A. and the Coachella Valley, sparking warnings for residents to stay indoors.
Pyrocumulus clouds are formed when extreme heat rises into the atmosphere, often from a wildfire or volcanic eruption. The intense heat causes the air near the ground to rise rapidly, eventually cooling and condensing into water droplets, forming a towering cumulus cloud.
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Image of “fire clouds” above the Line Fire in California on September 9. The smoke from this fire, as well as others in the area, is making the air quality dangerous for some people. Image of “fire clouds” above the Line Fire in California on September 9. The smoke from this fire, as well as others in the area, is making the air quality dangerous for some people. NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
In the case of wildfires or volcanic eruptions, pyrocumulus clouds often contain large amounts of ash, soot, and other particles that are lofted into the air along with the water vapor, giving the cloud a dark, dirty appearance.
These images of the fire clouds rising above the Line Fire were captured from space by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8.
On Tuesday, the smoke from this fire and the others burning nearby caused “Moderate to Unhealthy” Air Quality Index (AQI) levels in Palm Springs and Indio.
“Windblown dust will add to the current smoke pollution and is expected to cause Air Quality Index (AQI) values to reach Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups or worse in the Coachella Valley and Banning pass between Tuesday evening and Thursday morning,” the South Coast AQMD said in a statement.
The South Coast AQMD warns residents to “limit your exposure by remaining indoors with windows and doors closed or seeking alternate shelter,” avoid physical activity and use AC or air purifiers.
The AQI is calculated based on several key air pollutants regulated by health standards, including PM10 and PM2.5 particulate matter, ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. At “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups” levels, members of sensitive groups —like children, the elderly, and people with respiratory or heart conditions—may experience health effects.
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The Line Fire, which started near Highland on September 5, has now burned 34,659 acres as of about 7 a.m. local time on September 11 and is only about 14 percent contained. Over 65,600 structures are at risk from the blaze, and several neighborhoods have Evacuation Orders and Evacuation Warnings in place. The smoke from other nearby fires has actually helped slow the spread of the blaze.
“In the overnight hours of the Line Fire Wednesday, fire activity was moderated due to smoke shading and cooler weather. However, the fire grew on the north and east sides due to slope and vegetation driven runs,” Cal Fire said in a report this morning.
“Today elevated winds and continued dry conditions will allow the fire to grow. Smoke from fires across the region will help moderate fire activity unless the skies clear and the smoke thins. That would allow for more slope and vegetation aligned runs. There are 3,179 personnel assigned to the fire. Limited resource availability continues to hamper control efforts.”
To the west of the Line Fire, just north of Glendora, is the Bridge Fire. Burning across both Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, this blaze is 47,904 acres in area and 0 percent contained.
“Excessive heat and Red Flag Warning until Wednesday afternoon due to hot, dry, and unstable conditions with gusty onshore winds. Winds will shift to the west and northwest on Wednesday, which may impact higher elevation areas. Temperatures will remain high, however humidity will improve and increase slightly. Large vertical plume growth and visible smoke columns will be expected again for this fire,” an Inciweb update said.
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To the south of both of these fires, near Trabuco Canyon, the Airport Fire has grown from 5,432 acres on Tuesday to 22,376 acres as of Wednesday morning. This fire is also 0 percent contained.
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about wildfires? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
SACRAMENTO — President Donald Trump may visit California this week as state Attorney General Rob Bonta begins filing expected lawsuits against the president’s new executive orders.
Mr. Trump announced he will be visiting the Southern California fire zone Friday to tour the devastation from the historic wildfires in the Los Angeles area. During his inauguration speech, the president criticized California’s response to the fires.
As the legal battles begin between Democratic state legislators and the president, California’s GOP, including Republicans in Sacramento County, was celebrating on inauguration night.
The Capitol Lincoln Club held an inauguration party in Fair Oaks. Newly elected Sacramento County Supervisor Rosario Rodriguez was part of the crowd.
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“Trump reminded us where we were four years ago and where we could be today,” Rodriguez said.
“The Republican Party has never been in a better position to succeed,” Capitol Lincoln Club board member Christian Forte said.
As state Republicans celebrated, Bonta, a Democrat, prepared for legal clashes with the Trump administration, including over plans for mass deportations. Nearly half of the country’s undocumented immigrants live in California.
Following the president’s executive orders, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas issued a statement saying, “I will always fight for immigrants, especially children because America is a nation of immigrants, and I believe in our country’s promise.”
Besides mass immigration policies, Trump is also seeking to revoke the federal waiver allowing California to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars in 2035. It’s another move expected to end up in court.
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“California is only able to do that because the federal government grants us permission to smart that standard and, apparently with Trump’s executive order, he basically campaigned on this as well. He’s ordering the [Environmental Protection Agency] to revoke that authority from California,” said UC Berkeley Professor Ethan Elkind, who is also the director of the climate program at the university’s Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, California sued him more than 100 times.
President Donald Trump announced Monday that he will pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement, streamline permitting for oil and gas drilling and revoke electric vehicle rules.
The claims, which came in his inaugural address and in statements from the White House, are a replay of actions Trump took to roll back environmental rules during his first term from 2017 to 2021.
“We will drill, baby, drill,” Trump said Monday. “America will be a manufacturing nation once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have: the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it… we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to our great American autoworkers.”
But many of Trump’s efforts to rewrite environmental laws during his first term were overturned by courts or reversed by President Biden after he took office four years ago. As with Trump’s first term, experts are expecting California and other Democratic states to continue now to push to meet the Paris Agreement’s voluntary targets — which aimed to keep the planet from warming more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit or 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels — and take other steps to maintain their state environmental laws.
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“I think there is going to be more rhetoric about California than impact on California,” said Dustin Mulvaney, a professor of environmental studies at San Jose State University. “California has very strong decarbonization policies and state environmental policies. The concern is all the other states. California can’t tackle climate change alone. But California will use the resources we have to move its targets forward.”
In 2017, former Gov. Jerry Brown helped launch the U.S. Climate Alliance, an organization of states that agreed to work toward the Paris targets by expanding renewable energy, electric vehicles and other areas. Today there are 24 states in the group representing 55% of the U.S. population, including California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Arizona, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and most of the New England states.
“We’ve filled the void left by the federal government before and Americans can be sure, we’ll do it again,” said Casey Katims, executive director of the U.S. Climate Alliance, on Friday.
Trump is likely to clash with California on the environment in five main areas: Vehicle emissions, offshore oil drilling, offshore wind energy, water policy and federal aid for wildfires and other natural disasters.
When he was president the first time, Trump denied California permission under the federal Clean Air Act to set pollution standards for cars and trucks that are tougher than national standards, something it has done since the 1960s. Trump also attempted to revoke the state’s ability to set tougher standards at all for cars, trains, trucks or any vehicles.
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But he failed to achieve long-lasting change. California sued, and the lawsuit was still pending when Biden took office and restored the state’s powers. A month ago, Biden granted a key waiver to allow California to move forward with state rules to prohibit the sale of new gasoline-powered cars, minivans and pickup trucks starting in 2035. Already, 24% of new vehicle sales in California are electric, with higher percentages in the Bay Area.
After the first clash, California also signed voluntary agreements with five large automakers — Ford, VW, Honda, BMW and Volvo — to adhere to the state’s tailpipe emissions standards through 2026 as a way to ensure consistency when they design and build vehicles.
On offshore oil, Biden signed a sweeping memorandum earlier this month withdrawing all federal waters off California, Oregon and Washington from new offshore oil drilling. Trump said he would overturn it. But Biden used a 1953 law that a federal judge in 2019 ruled cannot be reversed without a vote of Congress. Some Republicans in California, Florida and other coastal states do not support expanding offshore drilling.
On offshore wind, the Trump White House announced Monday that “President Trump’s energy policies will end leasing to massive wind farms that degrade our natural landscapes and fail to serve American energy consumers.”
Trump has opposed wind energy for years, ever since the government in Scotland allowed turbines near a golf course he owned. He has claimed without evidence that wind turbines cause cancer and kill whales.
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Gov. Gavin Newsom and Biden pushed hard to build floating offshore wind turbines 20 miles or more off California’s coast to expand renewable energy. Trump could block new leases. But Biden already approved leases with five companies who have paid the federal treasury $757 million for the rights off Morro Bay and Humboldt County. Proposition 4, approved by voters in November, includes $475 million in state funding to expand ports to help build and deploy wind turbines. But the stock prices of some large wind companies fell after Trump’s win in November.
On disaster aid, Trump threatened to deny it to California during a rally in October over disagreements with the state over forest management and water policy.
“We’re not giving any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the fire, forest fires that you have,” Trump said. “It’s not hard to do.”
Newsom and Democratic leaders, along with a few Republicans, like Rep. Young Kim, R-Anaheim, have said they do not support any conditions being placed on disaster assistance. Trump is scheduled to visit Los Angeles on Friday to tour areas that burned.
“In the face of one of the worst natural disasters in America’s history, this moment underscores the critical need for partnership, a shared commitment to facts, and mutual respect,” Newsom said Monday.
Look up how your sheriff responded to questions about their plans to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to ramp up immigration enforcement could put California’s 58 elected sheriffs in the hot seat because of their responsibility to manage local jails. CalMatters surveyed all of California’s sheriff’s about how they plan to navigate the complexities in local, state and federal immigration laws. Here’s what they told us.
CalMatters reached out to the sheriffs by email and website contact forms. When those weren’t available, we called the contact number on their website. Two county sheriffs’ offices — Monterey and San Mateo — did not return calls seeking comment.
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For months, Trump allies have signaled that they’d focus initial immigration enforcement on undocumented people who have committed crimes. This month, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would empower immigration agencies to deport people arrested on suspicion of burglary, theft and shoplifting. The bill is expected to pass the Senate.
During the previous Trump administration, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a so-called sanctuary law that limits how local enforcement agencies interact with federal immigration officers. At the time, several sheriffs from inland counties criticized the law and embraced Trump’s immigration policies.
Tomas Apodaca is a journalism engineer. He supports CalMatters and The Markup’s journalism by exploring data, reverse-engineering algorithms, and creating custom tools.
Before joining CalMatters and…
More by Tomas Apodaca
Nigel Duara joined CalMatters in 2020 as a Los Angeles-based reporter covering poverty and inequality issues for our California Divide collaboration. Previously, he served as a national and climate correspondent…
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