Our live coverage has ended for the night. Go here or scroll through the posts below to read more about California’s wildfires.
The Carr Fire raging in Northern California has claimed six lives and destroyed at least 966 structures.
At least 19 people were still reported missing in Shasta County, California, officials said at a community meeting Monday evening.
Nonprofits are offering assistance for those forced to leave and help with the eventual rebuilding.
You can support these efforts via this link.
The Tri Counties Bank, which serves the affected region, has launched the 2018 Carr Fire Fund and contributed an initial $25,000 to benefit fire victims.
GoFundMe has verified this campaign, and you can support it here.
Josh Lister and his family lost their home and belongings after the massive Carr Fire swept through Redding, California.
Some residents were given only 30 minutes to evacuate, not knowing if they would see their homes again.
Lister and his family faced a “firestorm” as they fled their home, he said.
“We had zero warning,” Lister said. “We went to sleep. It was just like a normal day, and we’re woken up at six o’clock in the morning with banging on the door, telling us that we had to get out immediately.”
Watch more:
Officials expressed grief at a news conference Monday over the death of Capt. Brian Hughes, who was struck by a tree while battling the Ferguson Fire near Yosemite National Park this weekend.
Woody Smeck, superintendent for the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, said the 33-year-old firefighter of the Arrowhead Interagency Hotshots held his team together over several fire seasons.
Hughes is the second person to die while tackling the Ferguson Fire. Braden Varney, 36, a heavy fire equipment operator, died July 14 while battling the blaze.
Video taken near Redding, California, last week showed a “firenado” approaching teams battling the Carr Fire.
What exactly is a firenado?
As you may have guessed, it’s short for “fire tornado.” The intense heat from the fire causes the air to heat up quickly and rise rapidly. Combined with surface winds that are obviously quite strong, it creates a vortex similar to a dust devil.
But don’t let the name fool you: They are not the same as tornadoes that form during severe thunderstorms.
The Carr Fire raging in Northern California is so large and hot that it is creating rare mushroom-cloud like formations known as pyrocumulus clouds — which are basically its own localized weather system.
Here’s how they form: Normal cumulus clouds form because the sun’s rays heat the ground, forming warm air that rises because it is less dense than the cooler air above. As it rises, the air cools and condenses to form the cloud.
During a wildfire, however, the extreme heat from the flames forces air to rapidly rise. As the fire burns trees and other plant life it causes the water inside them to evaporate into the rising air. This additional moisture in the atmosphere condenses in the cooler air above, on smoke particles also produced by the fire.
They don’t just look like thunderstorms — they act like them, too: The clouds can produce lightning and cause the winds to gust and blow in different directions, CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller says.
Sometimes they even contain enough moisture to become a pyrocumulonimbus — another way of saying a cumulus cloud that produces rain. The rain that falls from a pyrocumulonimbus cloud sometimes can put out the same fire that created the cloud initially.
Here’s what it looks like on satellite:
Ed Bledsoe left his home in Shasta County, California, on Thursday to go to the doctor. The Carr Fire had been burning for four days at that point and Bledsoe said he didn’t realize the fire was coming into his neighborhood.
While he was out, his 70-year-old wife, Melody Bledsoe, called and told him she and their great-grandchildren — 4-year-old Emily Roberts and 5-year-old James Roberts — could see the fire.
He tried to get back to the house but couldn’t find a way. However, he was able to get through on the phone.
Bledsoe broke into sobs as he described his last conversation with his grandson.
Watch more:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shared satellite images taken Sunday over Northern California.
The white in the images are clouds, while the brown is smoke:
As of Monday morning, the Carr Fire has destroyed 966 structures, making it the 9th-most destructive fire in California history, according to Cal Fire statistics.
The records go back to at least 1923, and seven of the top 12 most destructive fires have occurred since 2015.
America is burning.
Ninety large fires have burned nearly 1 million acres in 14 states, according to the latest assessment by the National Interagency Fire Center, with large fires reported in virtually every geographic area except the Northeast, which the center notes is “very unusual for July.”
More than 60 of them are not contained.
The hot and dry weather conditions are behind much of the more extreme fires that are burning in California, Nevada, Oregon and Idaho.
The states currently reporting large fires are:
Jonathan Cox, a battalion chief and public information officer with with Cal Fire, said the fires in California right now are bigger and faster-burning than many the state has seen before.
He added that weather conditions shave “exploded” the fire “at a rate of spread that we have not seen before.”
The Carr Fire, he said, is 20% contained – up from just 5% on Sunday.
Watch more:
The current forecast for the Redding area, where the Carr Fire is burning, has temperatures in the triple digits all week.
Through Tuesday, the high temperatures will hover around 105°F, and by the end of the week, temperatures will hover near 100°F. This is a slight cool down from last week, when temperatures hovered around 110°F.
There continue to be dry conditions with no rain in the forecast through the week. Winds in the area will have gusts up to 25 mph. The fires are likely to generate their own winds which could be stronger at times.
Here’s more on the forecast from CNN meteorologist Chad Myers:
The fire began last Monday when a vehicle suffered mechanical failure, officials said.
Firefighters had been making progress containing it until Thursday night, when it began to quickly spread.
The blaze doubled in size Saturday. Flames have destroyed at least 874 structures in the area, Cal Fire said.
Here’s a look at where the fire is burning:
More than a dozen wildfires are burning in California right now, but the Carr Fire, burning close to the city of Redding, is the largest and deadliest.
Here’s what we know about the fire this morning:
