'This has never happened': San Jose State's wildfire lab makes scary discovery

Okay, but before everyone freaks out, 2 of the 5 samples for this year are record lows for a data set of 8 years. Also they seem to have taken only about 2/3 as many measurements this year as previous years, because the low points for previous years are between a number of the samples for this year.

The trend for the final two samples is well into new territory, for sure, but the overall tone is... shrill.

I biked up Mount Umunhum (means "place of the hummingbirds") on a terrible, steel frame mountain bike when I was a kid up Hicks Rd. Los Gatos and came down the other side by the reservoir at 45 mph / 72 kph (measured by cyclometer) sitting on the rear bike rack because the road was very, very steep. It had an old Cold War radar dish on it since it was the highest peak and it was visible from my house in South San Jose. The road to the radar dish was closed then. It has a weather station on it now.

I've never see it not covered in snow in the winter, green in the spring, or brown or yellow in the autumn and summer.

If this is the case, Has this happened before? If it does happen more often, maybe this area could be turning into a desert? If I remember, the native peoples lived amongst trees and more vegetation than exists today because immigrants cleared the land for farmland. (The house I grew up in was originally on the land of cherry orchards and I would find many ancient, rusty iron nails.)

South west San Jose / Almaden Valley are probably in the partial rain shadow of the Santa Cruz mountains, but the top of the Santa Cruz mountains should have lots of rain and fog.

Here’s a field guide on measuring fuel moisture content written by people at a California branch of the Forest Service:

https://www.bia.gov/sites/bia.gov/files/assets/public/pdf/id...

I think the title could be a little less vague. I'd like to suggest

> This year the fuel-moisture content across the Santa Cruz Mountains is terrifyingly low