SAN DIEGO — Late-summer dry thunderstorms rolled into California from the southwest desert region early Sept. 2, bringing thousands of lightning strikes and increasing the risk of wildfires as high temperatures lingered in parts of the state.
Shortly before 3 a.m. local time on Sept. 2, the National Weather Service office in the San Francisco Bay Area reported that numerous fires appeared to have ignited "during the past hour as a result of lightning in extreme" southeast Monterey County and southwest Fresno County. The agency noted that winds in the area had been light but fuels in the area remained very dry.
The weather service later reported that between midnight and 5:30 a.m. local time, nearly 4,800 total lightning strikes were recorded, including in-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning. Lightning data shared by the weather service showed that the lightning strikes were concentrated in areas between the inland East Bay and the Central Valley.
"'Dry' thunderstorms rolled through the Central Valley and portions of the East Bay this morning. Most areas saw less than 0.10" inches of rain & there were a few fire starts," the weather service said in a post on X.
Shortly after the thunderstorms moved through the region, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) reported over a dozen new wildfires. The causes for the blazes remained under investigation, according to Cal Fire.
