California recently passed two million acres of land destroyed by wildfires, setting a new state record just two-thirds of the way through the year, while the state still has the traditional “fire season” of September and October to go, the Associated Press reports.
The state started tracking burned acreage in 1987, with the previous annual record sitting at 1.96 million acres.
“It’s a little unnerving because September and October are historically our worst months for fires,” Lynne Tolmachoff, spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, told the AP. “It’s usually hot, and the fuels really dry out. And we see more of our wind events.”
The state has been hit with a double whammy: record wildfires and record high temperatures, causing high demand for electricity. The electrical supply, however, is at risk of being cut off by the wildfires–some of which have been caused by downed electrical cables.