Ask: What are the odds of the California fire making a full circle? | Hacker News Reader

Ask: What are the odds of the California fire making a full circle?

3 pointsnothrowaways15 comments

What are the odds of the fire expanding to the rest of the world making a full circle?

Something to the scale of COVID 19?

View on HN

What are the odds of the fire expanding to the rest of the world making a full circle?

I don't know how one would accurately calculate odds but your data inputs would be something along the line of:

- Areas of dense improperly managed brush (fuel, political and economic driven environmentalism)

- Areas of highly concentrated stick built homes (more fuel)

- Areas that get periods of sustained high desert winds.

- Mismanaged water sources (not saving rain water, letting nut and soft drink companies suck up all the ground water, letting 95% of rain water run into the sea or rivers)

- Concentration of unstable individuals that want to watch the world burn or have nothing left to lose except their life which they may not value any more. (Arson, mental illness, poverty)

California is isolated in terms of vegetation. There are too many barriers in the way to reach other states. Even the arson in Canada petered out because of natural barriers. The arsonists in California could potentially start shenanigans in Northern California to reach Oregon to get around some barriers but it would be lacking the predictable high sustained winds and the pot growers and lumber mills in true NorCal are quite vigilant regarding forest management.

So I guess it would be some number close to zero.

This is a literal description of most parts of the world.

I've traveled all over the lower 48 and can only think of a few states where even half of these things apply. The high sustained desert winds combined with improperly managed forests is a California thing. A few of these partially apply to some parts of the Appalachians. Some of the Midwest and South-Western states have the water mismanagement issues but lack the dense vegetation. Grass fires from lightning strikes are common in many places but that is maybe one fire truck or just let it burn itself out provided people have done proper fire abatement around their barns and homes. Washington State has some vegetation issues but it's always wet.

Its not one fire and, for any of them, probably not exactly zero, but close enough to it as to make no practical difference.

OTOH, if you count the separate fires as one fire and continue to expand the scope while doing that, it maybe already does, depending on how much toleration for gaps you have.

Stephen Leacock's A, B and C

(C is on his deathbed) "A", whispered C, "I think I am going fast" "How fast do you think you are going?" murmured A

Always has been. California has been part of the Pacific ring of fire since before it was called California. (Or the Pacific.)

How would you model such a thing? Are there open source weather modeling tools and data available?

That would be interesting, but I don't think such models exist.

Zero.

Why? Will the world run out of oxygen for the fire?

Natural firebreaks

Remember, there are huge area of the United States that have water (wet forests that won't burn so easily, amber waves of grain, etc.) but for some reason many Americans are like the wicked witch of the West and can't live anywhere near water. Look at Detroit for instance.

For now, we still have oceans and places with humidity.

It will have to expand at a pace slow enough to reach areas at their dry seasons.

What are you talking about?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com