Chicago weather forecast local officials urge caution as heat wave

Sept. 18, 2022, 5:45 p.m. ET

The entire island of Puerto Rico was without power Sunday afternoon, as Hurricane Fiona made landfall there. In a statement posted to social media, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi confirmed that the electrical system of the Puerto Rican power company LUMA Energy was out of service because of the storm and that staff members were ready to respond to the situation when conditions allowed. In a separate statement, LUMA said that because of the severity of the storm, “full restoration of power service could take several days.”

Sept. 18, 2022, 1:15 p.m. ET

Luke Vander Ploeg

Overnight rainfall gave a boost to firefighters battling Northern California’s Mosquito fire on Sunday morning. The largest wildfire California has seen this year was 34 percent contained as of early Sunday and had burned nearly 75,000 acres, according to Cal Fire. Forecasters expect continued rain Sunday evening with most of the fire potentially receiving more than an inch of rain by Monday morning.

Sept. 18, 2022, 1:13 p.m. ET

Luke Vander Ploeg

Tropical Storm Fiona was upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane on Sunday morning as it continued to travel north through the Caribbean, the National Hurricane Center said. The agency warned of torrential downpours and mudslides in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic as the storm began making its way between the two island nations. As Fiona pummeled Puerto Rico with winds of nearly 80 miles per hour, around 654,000 Puerto Ricans were left without power as of Sunday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us.

Sept. 18, 2022, 5:35 a.m. ET

Powerful typhoon thrashes Japan, with millions told to evacuate.

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TOKYO — Typhoon Nanmadol brought torrential rain and the risk of destructive landslides to Japan’s southernmost main island on Sunday, and more than eight million people were ordered to evacuate and seek shelter from the powerful storm, which was expected to traverse virtually the entire length of the country.

Some areas of the southern island, Kyushu, were expected to receive 20 inches of rain or more, an amount not seen in the area in decades, officials said. While the heavy rain was viewed as the primary threat to residents’ safety, winds exceeding 110 miles per hour were also recorded, causing heavy waves.

A total of nearly 8 million people in about 3.7 million households were ordered to evacuate from areas in southern and western Japan, according to NHK, the national broadcaster.

Thousands of people sought safety in shelters, and power was knocked out for about 190,000 households. Kyushu’s entire bullet-train service was suspended, and hundreds of domestic flights were canceled. By Sunday evening, a small number of injuries had been reported, but no deaths.

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Meteorological officials warned that the storm could be more damaging than Typhoon Jebi, which killed about a dozen people in Japan in 2018, and Typhoon Hagibis, the strongest storm to hit the country’s mainland in decades, which caused widespread flooding and landslides in 2019 and killed about 100 people.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was scheduled to depart Japan on Monday afternoon to attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York, but he was planning to delay his flight, according to NHK, the public broadcaster. Mr. Kishida will make a final decision on his trip after assessing the damage, NHK reported.

After passing over Okinawa, a southern Japanese archipelago, on Sunday Nanmadol weakened somewhat and became a “very strong typhoon” as it neared mainland Japan, the meteorological agency said.

It had been classified as a “violent typhoon,” the agency’s most severe category of storm based on wind speeds. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center, a U.S. military command in Hawaii, also issued a storm advisory, designating Nanmadol a “super typhoon” this past week.

The storm was projected to curve northeastward and trace almost the entire length of the main islands that make up Japan. Nearly the entire country was in the storm warning area designated by the agency.

The storm will probably head back to sea on Wednesday or Thursday, according to the meteorological agency. Forecasters in South Korea said that it could also affect southern parts of the country that were battered by Typhoon Hinnamnor two weeks ago.

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The term typhoon, like hurricane and cyclone, refers to tropical cyclones. Typhoons develop in the northwestern Pacific and usually affect Asia. Hurricanes form in the North Atlantic, the northeastern Pacific, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.

Hikari Hida reported from Tokyo, and John Yoon from Seoul. Austin Ramzy contributed reporting from Hong Kong.

Sept. 17, 2022, 3:57 p.m. ET

Storm surge in Alaska pulls homes from their foundations.

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FAIRBANKS, Alaska — Communities along Alaska’s western coast faced widespread flooding on Saturday as a powerful storm — the remnants of Typhoon Merbok — roared across the Bering Sea, with wind gusts tearing the siding off buildings and a storm surge pulling homes from their foundations.

The impact was felt across hundreds of miles of coastline as the storm raked the state from south to north. In Nome, raging waters pushed into six of the city’s streets, including part of Front Street, near where mushers finish the Iditarod sled-dog race. In Chevak, about 200 miles south, images showed sheds floating in tumbling waves next to sunken boats.

In Golovin, about 70 miles east of Nome, Dean Peterson said water had jumped the 20-foot berm that protects the community of 170 people, rushing through the lower-lying areas, pulling three homes from their foundations and destroying another.

People in the community scrambled to rescue an older adult from his home, and many evacuated to take shelter in the school, which itself was not fully protected.

“The school is completely surrounded by water,” Mr. Peterson said. He said he did not know of any injuries.

John Handeland, the mayor of Nome, said Saturday afternoon that there were no reports of injuries in his community, but that the storm surge had flooded several roads, pushing driftwood and debris into town. An unoccupied home was taken by the waters, and one waterfront road was at least partially washed away.

“It will be a few days before we can totally analyze the level of destruction,” he said.

On Saturday morning, water levels were seven to nine feet above normal in Nome, where the population is less than 10,000, according to the National Ocean Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Coastal flood warnings in some areas remained in effect through Sunday morning, National Weather Service officials in Alaska said. In the Koyuk area, about 130 miles east of Nome, water levels could still reach 12 to 18 feet above normal tide lines, they said.

Forecasters said the storm’s size and strength made it one of the most powerful systems to move through the Bering Sea area in decades, with waves north of the Aleutian Islands peaking at 50 feet on Friday. Many communities experienced wind gusts that were close to hurricane strength.

Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist based in Anchorage, said global warming had likely contributed to the severity of the storm. The explosive development of storms this far north is atypical, he said, because water temperatures are normally too cold to allow tropical cyclones to form.

“There’s a strong argument to be made that climate change tipped the scales to favor this storm,” he said.

Sea surface temperatures recorded along Alaska’s western coast were at or near record highs, Mr. Brettschneider said. “We can say that climate change will increase the likelihood that all these ingredients are in place at the same time,” he said, “and it’s not unreasonable to assume these types of storms will become more frequent.”

Emergency responders from local, state, federal and tribal agencies were assessing the situation and preparing to deploy. The region includes many communities with small populations — a few hundred people or less — and that are not connected by roads, making a broad response challenging.

Jeremy Zidek, a spokesman for the state’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said Saturday that the agency had not yet received any emergency requests or reports of deaths or injuries.

“People had a lot of warning, and they took a lot of precautionary measures,” he said.

But Mr. Zidek said the scope of the damage from the flooding would not be known on Saturday. “It normally takes a day or two before communities can get out and do a thorough assessment,” he said. “Sometimes it’s apparent or it looks minor and turns out to be more severe.”

In Gambell, on St. Lawrence Island, about 200 miles west of Nome, Travis Kaningok said he and a group of other volunteers had spent Friday night and Saturday morning building a temporary sea wall using gravel and sandbags. They had also monitored the waves overnight on behalf of the community, which has roughly 500 people.

“I have never seen anything like these waves before, going against the wind and getting bigger by the minute,” he said.

The airplane runways used to transport goods to individual communities also posed potential logistical issues for the days to come; photos showed that some of them appeared to be underwater on Saturday.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy said on Facebook on Saturday morning that he had verbally declared a disaster for the communities hit by the storm. The Alaska State Troopers said they were prepared to assist with search and rescue efforts if they became necessary.

In Hooper Bay, west of Chevak, one resident, Angivran Joe, said a home in the community hit by the storm surge had been knocked off its foundation, while another home across the street from it had begun to fall apart. Some fuel tanks had also tipped over, and many people were without electricity after the storm knocked out power, he said, though he added that some were now using generators.

“The whole town is blacked out,” he said.

Chris Mele contributed reporting.

Sept. 17, 2022, 1:29 p.m. ET

Mark Shimabukuro

With Tropical Storm Fiona intensifying as it moves through the Caribbean, a hurricane warning was issued for Puerto Rico and parts of the Dominican Republic on Saturday. The storm could approach hurricane strength as it nears Puerto Rico on Saturday night and was expected to become a hurricane by Sunday night, forecasters said.

Sept. 17, 2022, 11:37 a.m. ET

Mike Baker

Communities along Alaska’s western coast were dealing with widespread flooding on Saturday morning as the remnants of Typhoon Merbok moved through the Bering Sea. In Hooper Bay, residents reported that homes had flooded, and at least one had floated away from its foundation. In Nome, the mayor said water covered six different streets.

Sept. 17, 2022, 6:05 a.m. ET

Japan warns ‘violent typhoon’ could hit on Sunday.

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Typhoon Nanmadol brought torrential rain and the risk of destructive landslides to Japan’s southernmost main island on Sunday, after more than four million people were ordered to seek shelter from the powerful storm, which was expected to traverse virtually the entire length of the country.

Some areas of the southern island, Kyushu, were expected to receive 20 inches of rain or more, an amount not seen in the area in decades, officials said. While the heavy rain was viewed as the primary threat to residents’ safety, winds exceeding 110 miles per hour were also recorded, causing heavy waves.

Thousands of people sought safety in shelters, and power was knocked out for tens of thousands of households. Kyushu’s entire bullet-train service was suspended, and hundreds of domestic flights were canceled. By Sunday evening, a small number of injuries had been reported, but no deaths.

Meteorological officials warned that the storm could be more damaging than Typhoon Jebi, which killed about a dozen people in Japan in 2018, and Typhoon Hagibis, the strongest storm to hit the country’s mainland in decades, which caused widespread flooding and landslides in 2019 and killed about 100 people.

After passing over Okinawa, a southern Japanese archipelago, on Sunday Nanmadol weakened somewhat and became a “very strong typhoon” as it neared mainland Japan, the meteorological agency said.

It had been classified as a “violent typhoon,” the agency’s most severe category of storm based on wind speeds. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center, a U.S. military command in Hawaii, also issued a storm advisory, designating Nanmadol a “super typhoon” this past week.

The storm was projected to curve northeastward and trace almost the entire length of the main islands that make up Japan. Nearly the entire country was in the storm warning area designated by the agency.

The storm will probably head back to sea on Wednesday or Thursday, according to the meteorological agency. Forecasters in South Korea said that it could also affect southern parts of the country that were battered by Typhoon Hinnamnor two weeks ago.

The term typhoon, like hurricane and cyclone, refers to tropical cyclones. Typhoons develop in the northwestern Pacific and usually affect Asia. Hurricanes form in the North Atlantic, the northeastern Pacific, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.

Austin Ramzy and Hikari Hida contributed reporting.

Sept. 16, 2022, 7:58 a.m. ET

Western Alaska braces for its strongest storm in years.

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A powerful storm slammed western parts of Alaska on Saturday as a dangerous weather system brought winds of around 90 miles per hour and heavy rain, causing significant coastal flooding.

Remnants of a tropical cyclone, Typhoon Merbok, were forecast to move north through the Bering Sea region from Friday through Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. Coastal flood warnings and high wind warnings were issued for Nome, Stebbins to the south, Point Hope to the north and other areas.

Forecasters warned that the storm could cause flooding to homes, businesses and critical infrastructure. The Weather Service said on Twitter that water levels of more than 10 feet recorded at Nome exceeded those recorded in 2011 and 2004.

The highest water in the modern era was about 12 feet, recorded in 1974, it said, adding, “Significant impacts are occurring in Nome and many other communities at this time.”

As of Saturday morning, water levels were seven to nine feet above normal in Nome, where the population is less than 10,000, said the National Ocean Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“This continues to be a dangerous storm as it is producing water levels above higher than any seen over at least 50 years,” forecasters at the Weather Service in Fairbanks, Alaska, wrote early on Saturday morning.

Waves north of the Aleutian Islands were reported at or above 35 feet for 12 hours straight on Friday and peaked at more than 50 feet, forecasters said.

The state’s emergency personnel are worried mostly about “wind-driven sea surge” as many areas in the danger zone are low-lying and flat, Jeremy Zidek, a spokesman for the state’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said on Friday.

Preparation for such a storm in a geographically expansive area, where communities often consist of a few hundred or fewer people and are spaced far apart from one another, poses significant challenges for state emergency personnel, Mr. Zidek said. Positioning resources, like extra firefighters, in communities before the storm would make sense in more populous areas but is not practical in Alaska, he said.

Because there are few roads between communities and the roads that do exist are often difficult to travel, “we really have to take a wait-and-see approach before we deploy the limited resources that we have,” Mr. Zidek said, adding that “Alaska is a different animal.”

⬇️Forecasted peak water levels, timing, and winds. Water levels will be slow to fall, and water will remain at or near peak levels for up to 24 hours in some locations. #akwx pic.twitter.com/HpZb7kAm5Z

— NWS Fairbanks (@NWSFairbanks) September 16, 2022

Officials with the state’s Department of Transportation and Public Facilities said they were monitoring conditions and would assess any damage when the storm passes. The Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management issued a similar message.

As of Saturday morning, there was major coastal flooding in the lower Yukon Delta, and water levels were expected to start receding there on Saturday evening, the Weather Service said. In the Norton Sound Region, water levels were expected to peak on Saturday afternoon and to start receding late on Sunday morning. North of the Bering Strait, water levels were expected to peak overnight.

For most communities in the storm’s path, the potential for infrastructure damage was the biggest concern, according to Scott Berg, a meteorologist with the Weather Service in Fairbanks.

“We’re looking at inundation of the communities,” he said in an interview late on Thursday, noting that runways that small villages rely on for supplies and for getting people in and out of town by airplane may be submerged in certain areas. Widespread power outages, because of high winds, were also a possibility.

“We do get storms several times during the winter, but this is a pretty significant storm that’s going to push water into areas that probably hasn’t seen flooding in 50 years or more,” he said.

In 2011, a powerful system with hurricane-force winds pummeled western Alaska, causing power failures. At the time, the Weather Service described the storm as having “an epic magnitude rarely experienced.” Schools around the region served as shelters and provided food for residents.

In Nome, where coastal flooding this weekend could reach 11 feet above the normal high tide, officials were in preparation mode. The city’s mayor, John Handeland, told The Associated Press that an emergency shelter had been set up. “We do know the drill and where things normally are impacted” because of previous storms, he said.

Amanda Holpuch and Vimal Patel contributed reporting.

Sept. 15, 2022, 5:53 p.m. ET

Elena Shao

Reporting on climate

Weatherwise, it has been a record-setting summer for many parts of the world. Europe and North America experienced their hottest August months in the 143-year record. Check out these and other updates from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest climate outlook.

Sept. 15, 2022, 3:40 p.m. ET

Kevin Yamamura

Reporting from Sacramento

California has been mired in a historic drought, but rare September rains may ultimately help firefighters control two of the state’s most concerning wildfires this year. A week ago, the Fairview fire in Riverside County was raging, but Tropical Storm Kay dropped precipitation, and the blaze is now 84 percent contained. The Mosquito fire in the Sierra Nevada has grown to become the state’s largest in 2022, but forecasters say rainfall in a few days could also prove beneficial.

Against the odds, a very early and pretty substantial/probably "fire season slowing" precipitation event appears likely for much of NorCal late this weekend. If we can get through the Sat-Sun SW wind event, things will likely be looking much better on #MosquitoFire by Mon. #CAwx pic.twitter.com/LN7JTvW9Z0

— Daniel Swain (@Weather_West) September 15, 2022

Sept. 15, 2022, 2:20 a.m. ET

The Mosquito fire becomes California’s largest of the year.

• Fires
• Burning
• Burned

• Air quality
• Good
• Hazardous

Mosquito

Active 1 days Updated Wed. 2:48 PM PT

• 6,000 acres
• 0% contained
• +6,000 acres in past day

The Mosquito fire, which has been tearing through the Sierra Nevada foothills since last week, became California’s largest blaze of the year on Wednesday.

The fire formed on Sept. 6 and has been moving east through dry, hilly terrain northeast of Sacramento, the state capital. It made an unexpected surge on Tuesday, damaging or destroying some buildings.

By Wednesday evening it had grown to more than 63,000 acres, making it California’s largest of the 2022 season, said Kevin Tidwell, the public information officer on the Mosquito fire.

It was 20 percent contained as of Wednesday night. Cooler temperatures and higher humidity expected over the next few days are likely to help firefighting crews, and light southwesterly winds could steer flames and smoke away from nearby communities, Mr. Tidwell said in a phone interview.

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Still, he added, those same winds could also give the fire fresh oxygen and push it farther east into dry forests west of Lake Tahoe that are loaded with potential kindling.

“It’s still those critically dry fuels that are the issue,” he said.

Several evacuation orders and warnings were in effect on Wednesday for Placer and El Dorado Counties. Mr. Tidwell said that while firefighting crews had made progress lately on the fire’s northern, western and southern flanks, the area was not yet safe enough for any of the more than 11,000 residents who had been evacuated to return to their homes.

California’s next-largest active blaze, the McKinney fire, became the state’s largest of the year in late July. As of Wednesday night it was just over 60,000 acres and 99 percent contained.

Sept. 14, 2022, 10:54 p.m. ET

The New York Times

Tropical Storm Fiona will bring heavy rain to the Caribbean this weekend.

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Five years after Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico and knocked out power to the island, residents of the territory faced another collapse of their energy grid as Hurricane Fiona — which forecasters warned could bring more than two and a half feet of rain and cause life-threatening floods and landslides — made landfall.

Nearly 1.5 million customers were without electricity on Sunday afternoon, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks power interruptions.

Pedro Pierluisi, the governor of Puerto Rico, said at a news conference Sunday afternoon that the authorities were assessing damage and working to stave off a growing disaster. He said officials were rescuing people in isolated areas and deploying the National Guard and other personnel to evacuate low-lying areas where rivers were expected to flood.

“Hurricane Fiona has blanketed Puerto Rico,” Mr. Pierluisi said in Spanish, adding that the storm has been one of the most significant to hit since Hurricane Maria devastated it in 2017. “This has been a direct impact that has covered all of the island.”

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Since Hurricane Maria, unreliable electricity has been a mainstay of life on the island, leading to a slow recovery and widespread protests by frustrated residents.

When asked what went wrong with the island’s power grid, Jaclyn Rothenberg, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said on Sunday that the agency’s priority was on how to meet immediate needs, and a diagnosis of what had gone wrong would have to come later.

“Our focus remains on critical needs and lifesaving efforts, should there be any, given the fact that the storm is literally hovering over the island,” Ms. Rothenberg said.

The power company LUMA warned on Sunday that full power restoration could take several days. It said that the storm was “incredibly challenging” and that restoration efforts would begin when it was safe to do so.

“The current weather conditions are extremely dangerous and are hampering our ability to fully assess the situation,” it said on its website.

When Hurricane Maria struck the island as a Category 4 storm, it produced as much as 40 inches of rainfall and caused the deaths of an estimated 2,975 people. On Sunday morning, Fiona strengthened from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane.

Fiona made landfall, meaning the eye of the storm crossed the shoreline, along the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico near Punta Tocon around 3:20 p.m. local time, the National Hurricane Center said.

Significant flooding had already occurred, and it was likely the rain would continue through Monday morning, said Jamie Rhome, the acting director of the National Hurricane Center.

“It’s basically going to park itself over the island tonight and produce very, very, very heavy rainfall,” Mr. Rhome said.

While still a tropical storm, Fiona brought flooding to Guadeloupe, an island southeast of Puerto Rico, and there was at least one storm-related death in the capital, a government official said on Saturday.

In Puerto Rico, rainfall totals could reach 12 to 16 inches, with local maximum totals of 30 inches, particularly across eastern and southern Puerto Rico, forecasters said. The rain threatened to cause not only flash flooding across Puerto Rico and portions of the eastern Dominican Republic but also mudslides and landslides.

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At a Sunday morning news conference, Mr. Pierluisi urged people to stay in their homes if they could or evacuate if they lived in an area prone to landslides or floods. Public schools on the island will be closed on Monday, he said, and only public employees who perform essential roles or respond to emergencies should report to work.

President Biden on Sunday approved an emergency declaration for Puerto Rico, which authorizes federal agencies to coordinate disaster relief efforts.

Heavy rains from Fiona will continue into Sunday night in Puerto Rico, forecasters said. The storm surge and tide could flood normally dry areas along the coast, and forecasters warned that the water could reach one to three feet on the southern coast if the peak surge occurred at high tide.

The storm could bring four to six inches of rain to the British and U.S. Virgin Islands and up to 10 inches on St. Croix, forecaster said.

The storm is expected to continue strengthening through Tuesday as it moves near the Dominican Republic, which could see hurricane conditions as soon as Sunday night. The northern and eastern parts of the country could get four to eight inches of rain, with isolated areas of up to one foot.

If the storm continues on a north northwest track, it could possibly affect the Bahamas, the Hurricane Center said.

Tropical storm warnings were issued for Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas, including the Acklins, Crooked Island, Long Cay, Inagua, Mayaguana and the Ragged Islands.

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The Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June through November, had a relatively quiet start, with only three named storms before September. There were no named storms in the Atlantic during August, the first time that happened since 1997. But storm activity picked up in early September, with Danielle and Earl, which both eventually became hurricanes, forming within a day of each other.

In early August, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued an updated forecast for the rest of the season, which still called for an above-normal level of activity.

In it, they predicted the season could include 14 to 20 named storms, with six to 10 turning into hurricanes that could sustain winds of at least 74 m.p.h. Three to five of those could strengthen into what the agency calls major hurricanes — Category 3 or stronger — with winds of at least 111 m.p.h.

Last year, there were 21 named storms, after a record-breaking 30 in 2020. For the past two years, meteorologists have exhausted the list of names used to identify storms during the Atlantic hurricane season, an occurrence that has happened only one other time, in 2005.

The links between hurricanes and climate change have become clearer with each passing year. Data shows that hurricanes have become stronger worldwide during the past four decades. A warming planet can expect stronger hurricanes over time and a higher incidence of the most powerful storms — though the overall number of storms could drop, because factors like stronger wind shear could keep weaker storms from forming.

Hurricanes are also becoming wetter because of more water vapor in the warmer atmosphere; storms like Hurricane Harvey in 2017 produced far more rain than they would have without the human effects on the climate, scientists have suggested. Also, rising sea levels are contributing to higher storm surge — the most destructive element of tropical cyclones.

Johnny Diaz, Amanda Holpuch, Eduardo Medina, McKenna Oxenden, Chris Stanford, Vimal Patel, Christopher Mele, Derrick Bryson Taylor and April Rubin contributed reporting.

Sept. 13, 2022, 1:34 p.m. ET

Firefighters gain ground on a Northern California wildfire.

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The Mosquito fire roaring through the dry Sierra Nevada foothills northeast of Sacramento made an unexpected surge on Tuesday afternoon, hours after firefighters expressed cautious optimism that they were gaining control over the blaze.

An offshoot of the fire raced up from the bottom of a steep canyon next to the town of Foresthill, damaging or destroying some buildings before firefighters were able to push it back, said Rob Scott, a fire behavior analyst for the U.S. Forest Service.

“This demonstrates the volatility and the explosiveness of the environment in this specific area right now,” Mr. Scott said. He said that the fire’s behavior was “aggressive,” but that firefighters worked quickly to contain it.

“It was a great save,” he said.

The fire had grown by about 1,000 acres overnight to 49,761 acres on Tuesday morning, a far cry from the kind of growth seen last week, when it exploded in its initial days. Firefighters have contained 18 percent of the blaze, up from 10 percent the day before, according to Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency.

• Fires
• Burning
• Burned

• Air quality
• Good
• Hazardous

Mosquito

Active 1 days Updated Wed. 2:48 PM PT

• 6,000 acres
• 0% contained
• +6,000 acres in past day

Cooler weather and higher humidity over the weekend and early this week had aided firefighters, who faced difficult conditions last week during a triple-digit heat wave. Though Cal Fire expected stronger winds on Tuesday that could fan the flames, the breezes sometimes waft away smoke, making it easier for crews to attack the fire from above by dropping water from helicopters.

More than 11,000 people living in rural foothill communities have been forced to evacuate by the fire, and at least 46 buildings have been destroyed, including 25 homes, Cal Fire said.

Hundreds of miles south, some mountain and desert communities in Southern California have been deluged by rain and faced flash flood warnings as a result of the remnants of Tropical Storm Kay. On Sunday, dozens of drivers were rescued after a mudslide trapped them on a road near Lake Hughes in northern Los Angeles County. The Los Angeles County Fire Department said it had rescued 14 people from that area using a helicopter.

On Monday, a highway in the San Bernardino Mountains was blocked by a mudslide, and some people living in the mountains east of Yucaipa were ordered to evacuate.

Sept. 13, 2022, 5:28 a.m. ET

Flash flooding is expected on Long Island after an early morning tornado alert in New York.

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Though a tornado in Brooklyn and Queens that had been feared failed to materialize, thunderstorms early Tuesday morning brought heavy rainfall to New York City and the surrounding areas, leading to some areas of flash flooding and subway delays during the busy morning hours.

Ross Dickman, the National Weather Service meteorologist in charge of the New York region, said that overall the city did not see widespread flooding. The reports of flooding, he said, were concentrated in urban areas with poor drainage and those regions where the rain fell particularly heavy and fast, including in northern Queens.

La Guardia Airport saw the largest amount of rainfall in the city at just over two inches, Mr. Dickman said, which fell in about one to three hours.

As of 9 a.m., the chances of heavy rainfall in the city had mostly passed, but the Weather Service’s forecast still showed a small possibility of scattered showers and thunderstorms through the early afternoon, according to James Connolly, a meteorologist with the service.

The Weather Service sent an emergency alert about a tornado warning to cellphones shortly after 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday, with many people on social media saying that it had woken them up. The warning was in effect until 5 a.m. and covered the southern tips of Brooklyn and Queens, roughly in the area of Coney Island and the Rockaways. There were no reports of tornado sightings.

By the time the weather system reached the shore, it had weakened significantly, Mr. Connolly said.

“As far as a tornado on land, we’re not expecting it at this point,” he said on Tuesday morning.

However, there were reports of flooding in Queens, some flash flooding in Westchester County, as well as in other parts of the city, Mr. Connolly said. The Weather Service was still collecting reports of flooding into the midmorning to get a clearer picture of the storm’s effects throughout the city, he added.

The storm created headaches for New Yorkers Tuesday morning, particularly commuters. Several people in Queens reported that their apartments had flooded, while heavy flooding on the Long Island Expressway led to lane closures.

On the subway, water on the tracks caused delays as well as rerouted trains on the A, C, R, L, F and G lines throughout the morning, according to alerts from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Other subway lines experienced delays because of emergencies unrelated to the storm, such as a person being hit by a train at the East 180 Street station in the Bronx.

Sept. 12, 2022, 12:42 p.m. ET

Kellen Browning

Reporting from Northern California

The Mosquito fire continued to burn through dry foothills northeast of Sacramento over the weekend, growing to 46,587 acres. Firefighters began to make progress early Sunday and reported 10 percent containment, the level it remained at Monday morning. Firefighters spent Sunday establishing control lines to hem in the blaze, dropping water from above and protecting nearby towns. Though temperatures have cooled, officials expect that dry vegetation and winds could help the fire continue to spread.

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Sept. 12, 2022, 11:17 a.m. ET

Scott Dodd

The heat wave has finally broken in the West, although several large wildfires continue to grow and spread hazardous air. A stretch of the country from the Great Lakes through New York could see heavy rain and flooding early this week, the National Weather Service says. And the Atlantic Ocean is pretty quiet, with no imminent tropical storm threats.

Sept. 12, 2022, 11:23 a.m. ET

Scott Dodd

Meanwhile, here was a fun weather moment from the weekend (though not everyone in Chicago enjoyed the rain).

Sept. 11, 2022, 6:43 p.m. ET

Persistent rains pummel Chicago, submerging roads and swamping basements.

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CHICAGO — Torrential, unrelenting rains swept through Chicago on Sunday, flooding basements and alleys, closing grocery stores and restaurants, and leaving cars floating under viaducts on streets impassable with deep water.

The extreme weather took the city by surprise, particularly the North Side of Chicago. Close to five inches of rain had fallen by late afternoon, according to Kevin Doom, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

“This has been a mess,” he said. “The water rose pretty quickly this morning, so it caught a lot of people off guard.”

At some intersections, cars were stranded in the rainwater after motorists drove through suddenly flooded roads. Homeowners whose basements had not seen water in years were unpleasantly surprised to discover that rainwater had surged up through drains, in some cases leaving an ankle-deep flood carrying a pungent smell of sewage. Grocery stores dealing with flooding closed their doors, and some businesses could not open at all.

To prevent more flooding, Mayor Lori Lightfoot advised Chicagoans not to run dishwashers or washing machines. She also said people should avoid swimming in Lake Michigan because of high waves and dangerous conditions.

Chicago is prone to flash flooding when its sewer system becomes inundated, but this storm placed unusual stress on the city, officials and residents said.

“What happened today was a really heavy downpour, really quickly, in a way that appeared to have overwhelmed some of the sewer infrastructure,” Andre Vasquez, an alderman who represents a ward on the North Side, said. “It’s a trend. We need to figure out how to adapt, planting more rain gardens and native species, having more green space that can absorb more of the runoff water.”

Rain was continuing throughout the later afternoon and evening, and was not expected to let up until Monday.

Michael Roper, owner of Hopleaf, a bar and restaurant in the Andersonville neighborhood on the North Side, said that he was forced to shut down the restaurant for lunch service on Sunday after the basement flooded during the first surge of rain.

“It’s been a rough day,” Mr. Roper said. In the morning, employees rushed into the restaurant — but instead of prepping for lunch, they grabbed mops and buckets to clean up.

In 30 years of running the restaurant, he said, this kind of flooding has forced a closure perhaps a half dozen times. He added that the city needed to update its infrastructure to respond to increased rainstorms, even though it has been spared the extreme weather seen in much of the country.

“Everything like this is extra exhausting right now,” he said. “Chicago is becoming a climate change destination. But things still happen. There’s tornadoes, here’s wind storms, there’s lightning. And there’s rain like today.”

Sept. 11, 2022, 2:49 p.m. ET

Luke Vander Ploeg

The Cedar Creek fire grew more than 35,000 acres overnight to a size of nearly 90,000 acres on Sunday as it continued to burn east of Oakridge, Ore., according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center, a regional fire agency. The agency downgraded the fire’s containment, back to zero percent from 13 percent, as the inferno continued to spread west, fueled by strong winds and dry conditions. As of Sunday morning, 2,230 homes and 443 commercial buildings were threatened by the fire.

• Fires
• Burning
• Burned

• Air quality
• Good
• Hazardous

Cedar Creek

Active 41 days Updated Sun. 3:49 AM PT

• 86,000 acres
• 0% contained
• +12,000 acres/past day

Sept. 11, 2022, 2:37 p.m. ET

A wildfire in Washington blows toxic air to Seattle.

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A rare westerly wind and rain showers offered a respite to fire response teams as they fought to keep a wildfire from reaching populated areas near Washington State’s Cascade Mountains on Sunday, a fire official said.

The Bolt Creek fire broke out sometime Saturday morning and spread rapidly westward over the course of the day, prompting an evacuation order for the small town of Index, Wash., and choking the Seattle area 40 miles to the west with smoke and ash. About 7,600 acres were affected by the fire as of early Sunday morning, with 500 structures in the evacuation zone. So far, there have been no reports of injuries or damaged property.

• Fires
• Burning
• Burned

• Air quality
• Good
• Hazardous

Bolt Creek

Active 1 days Updated Sun. 3:49 AM PT

• 7,700 acres
• 0% contained
• +7,700 acres/past day

The rain and change in wind direction were cause for optimism, said Peter Mongillo, a spokesman with Snohomish Regional Fire and Rescue.

“We’ll see what the weather holds,” Mr. Mongillo said early Sunday morning. “Once the sun comes up, the weather starts changing.”

Easterly winds pushed smoke and ash from the fire toward Seattle on Saturday, causing the air quality to turn toxic. Later, even with fresh air blowing in from the west, air quality in the Puget Sound area, including Seattle, was still considered hazardous on Sunday morning.

The cause of the fire was still under investigation. The Bolt Creek fire was one of 17 large fires burning across Washington and Oregon as of Sunday morning.

Sept. 11, 2022, 12:01 a.m. ET

Devastated by floods, Pakistan faces looming food crisis.

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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Violent swells have swept away roads, homes, schools and hospitals across much of Pakistan. Millions of people have been driven from their homes, struggling through waist-deep, fetid water to reach islands of safety. Nearly all of the country’s crops along with thousands of livestock and stores of wheat and fertilizer have been damaged — prompting warnings of a looming food crisis.

Since a deluge of monsoon rains lashed Pakistan last week, piling more water on top of more than two months of record flooding that has killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of millions, the Pakistani government and international relief organizations have scrambled tosave people and vital infrastructure in what officials have called a climate disaster of epic proportions.

Areas that flooded in July and August

Source: UNOSAT analysis of Suomi NPP satellite data, July 1 to Aug. 31 The New York Times

Floodwater now covers around a third of the country, including its agricultural belt, with more rain predicted in the coming weeks. The damage from the flood will likely be “far greater” than initial estimates of around $10 billion, according to the country’s planning minister, Ahsan Iqbal.

The flooding has crippled a country that was already reeling from an economic crisis and double digit-inflation that has sent the price of basic goods soaring. Now the floodingthreatens to set Pakistan back years or even decades, officials warned, and to fan the flames of political tensions that have engulfed the country since former Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted last spring.

The damage to the country’s agricultural sector could also be felt across the globe, experts warn. Pakistan is one of the world’s top producers and exporters of cotton and rice — crops that have been devastated by the flood. As much as half of the country’s cotton crop has been destroyed, officials said, a blow to global cotton production in a year when cotton prices have soared as other major producers from the United States to China have been hit with extreme weather.

The floodwaters also threaten to derail Pakistan’s wheat planting season this fall, raising the possibility of continued food shortfalls and price spikes through next year. It is an alarming prospect in a country that depends on its wheat production to feed itself at a time when global wheat supplies are precarious.

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“We’re in a very dire situation,” said Rathi Palakrishnan, deputy country director of the World Food Program in Pakistan. “There’s no buffer stocks of wheat, there’s no seeds because farmers have lost them.”

“If the flood levels don’t recede before the planting season in October, we’re in big trouble,” she added.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government, along with the United Nations, has appealed for $160 million in emergency funding to reach 5.2 million of the country’s most vulnerable people.

The scale of the devastation in Pakistan stands out even in a year punctuated by extreme weather, including heat waves across Europe and the United States, intense rain that has drenched parts of Asia and the worst drought to hit East Africa in decades.

Since the start of the monsoon season in Pakistan this summer, more than 1,300 people have died in floods — nearly half of whom are children — and more than 6,000 have been injured, according to the United Nations. Around 33 million people have been displaced. Floodwater now covers around 100,000 square miles — an area larger than the size of Britain — with more floods expected in the coming weeks.

Sindh Province, which produces around a third of the country’s food supply, has been among the hardest hit by the rains. The province received nearly six times its 30-year average rainfall this monsoon season, which has damaged around 50 percent of the province’s crops, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

Sources: 2017-21 crop areas from Impact Observatory analysis of Sentinel-2 imagery; flood extent from UNOSAT The New York Times

In Sanghar, one of the largest cotton-producing districts in Sindh, Imdad Hingorja, a 45-year-old farmer, owns a small plot of land and was growing cotton. He said that the rains and floods came exactly when the crops in his fields were ready to harvest.

“I have lost everything now. There is five to six feet of water in my fields, and I do not know how long it will take the water to dry,” said Mr. Hingorja, whose sole source of income to feed his five-member family is farming.

Mr. Hingorja recently took a loan from a relative to buy new seeds and fertilizer after his stores washed away in the floods. But if the waist-deep water does not subside by the time he needs to plant, he does not know what he will do.

“Floods are God’s wrath, and we cannot escape from it. But who will tell it to the lender who will now ask me to pay back his money?” he said. “I will have not only lost my standing crops but also wasted my entire agriculture year.”

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In Tank District in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, a vast province in the northwest, the flooding washed out 35 acres of land that Rahimullah Khan, 47, cultivates, destroying his entire crop of rice, corn and sugar cane. He had poured his yearly savings into the crops, he said, and borrowed around 135,000 Pakistani rupees — or about $570 — for fertilizer.

“I am left with nothing but a pair of cows,” Mr. Khan said. “The dairy from the cow is the only thing keeping my children from complete hunger.”

But if the water recedes, he added, he will have to sell the cows to pay back his loans and gather the resources he needs to plant his fall wheat crop.

Even before the monsoon rains hit this year, many of the country’s farmers had barely scraped by, as the economic crisis pushed the price of the basics needed to cultivate beyond their reach and season after season of extreme weather — from heat waves to heavy monsoon rains — lashed their fields.

“Farmers have been pushed into poverty as most of them are in debt due to high-interest rates on loans to buy farm inputs such as seeds, pesticides, and fertilizers,” said Akram Khaskheli, a leader of Hari Welfare Association, a nongovernmental organization for farmers based in Hyderabad.

Now, the destruction of their crops has resulted in millions of rupees of loss to farmers and pushed up the prices of vegetables like onions and tomatoes, crops of which were already destroyed.

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While large landowners will likely survive the floods, the damage has been devastating for the tens of thousands of smaller landowners and farmers that make up the backbone of Pakistan’s agriculture sector, Mr. Khaskheli added.

Land ownership remains an extremely feudal system in Pakistan, made up largely of vast estates cultivated by farmers who work as forced labor, primarily in the form of debt bondage.

Officials have warned that the damage and economic losses will be felt throughout the country for months and years to come. The loss of cotton to Pakistan’s textile industry, which contributes nearly 10 percent of the country’s G.D.P., could hamper any hopes for an economic recovery.

Aid officials have warned that even after the floods subside, rural communities face a possible second wave of deaths from food shortages and diseases transmitted by contaminated water and animals. And severe inflation and shortages of fresh produce will likely hit urban centers unaffected by the flooding.

To address the immediate needs of the millions affected by the flooding, aid groups and the Pakistani government have launched rescue efforts and mounted emergency aid distribution.

“The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids — the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a message launching an appeal for international assistance to Pakistan.

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But the scale of the crisis has complicated relief efforts, Pakistani officials say. And as conditions worsens, anger has risen across Pakistan over the government’s response.

“We were left to fend for ourselves,” said Mushtaq Jamali, 84, a farmer from Sindh Province. “There was not a single government official or elected representative in our village to help us to evacuate.”

Mr. Jamali, 84, migrated from the outskirts of Jacobabad, a city in Sindh, to the port city of Karachi late last month after flooding consumed his small farm.

The floods this year were the latest extreme weather calamity to uproot his family. The 2010 floods that hit Sindh also forced Mr. Jamali, along with his 18-member extended family, to migrate to Karachi, after their house was damaged. For five years, he saved money to reconstruct their home, he said.

But in recent years, life in the district has become almostimpossible to survive. Jacobabad is one of Pakistan’s most climate-change-hit districts and is considered one of the hottest places on earth.

In May, the temperatures rose to 124 degrees Fahrenheit — 51 degrees Celsius — making it one of the hottest cities in the world. Then the flooding in August destroyed his home yet again. Now, he says, he and his family plan to stay in Karachi permanently.

“Because of excessive rains, floods, and heat, it is difficult to survive in Jacobabad now and construct the house again,” he said. “Our area was completely inundated. Everything was under water. There was not enough dry land even to bury the people who died because of collapses of roofs and walls of their houses.”

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Christina Goldbaum reported from Dubai and Islamabad, Pakistan, and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi. Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud contributed reporting from Islamabad.

Correction:

Sept. 14, 2022

An earlier version of this article miscalculated the currency exchange for the amount that Rahimullah Khan borrowed for fertilizer. It was 135,000 Pakistani rupees, which equates to $570, not $1,700.

Sept. 10, 2022, 9:29 p.m. ET

Kellen Browning

Reporting from Northern California

I got a closer look at the Mosquito fire on Saturday afternoon while driving among the foothills northeast of Auburn and through the town of Foresthill. A thick, smoky haze blotted out nearby hills and was particularly noxious to the north of Foresthill, right on the northern edge of the fire. Perhaps even worse for firefighters: The deep canyons and sheer cliffs jutting up from the American River have made fighting the fire extremely treacherous.

Video

Sept. 10, 2022, 7:05 p.m. ET

Wildfires and fire weather cause evacuations and power outages in Oregon.

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Two wildfires in western Oregon have led authorities to issue evacuation orders to thousands of residents.

The Cedar Creek fire, which has burned nearly 90,000 acres and was 0 percent contained on Sunday, prompted officials in Lane County to issue a Level 3 alert — indicating the most urgent level of danger. More than 7,000 people in the county were under the evacuation order on Sunday, including those who lived near the towns of Oakridge and Westfir, which are about 40 miles southeast of Eugene. A spokesperson with Lane County said that as of Saturday night around 3,000 people had evacuated nearby areas.

• Fires
• Burning
• Burned

• Air quality
• Good
• Hazardous

Cedar Creek

Active 41 days Updated Sun. 3:49 AM PT

• 86,000 acres
• 0% contained
• +12,000 acres/past day

Another fire, at Milo McIver State Park, near the Portland suburb of Clackamas, also led to evacuations. Clackamas County had an estimated 1,600 people under a Level 3 evacuation order on Saturday. That fire burned only 25 acres by Saturday afternoon, and was fully contained by Sunday with evacuation orders lifted entirely by the afternoon.

Extreme temperatures and high winds from Saturday eased into more favorable conditions for firefighting on Sunday, with winds slowing and turning toward the northwest and temperatures beginning to fall. Still, fire officials said the Cedar Creek blaze was likely to continue to spread through land that was left dry and ready to burn by a recent streak of hot, dry weather in the region.

The Red Cross has opened three shelters in western Oregon, in the towns of Eugene, Klamath Falls and Salem. State leaders have also issued an air quality advisory until Monday for 10 counties, as wildfire smoke blankets the state.

Because of the recent extreme fire weather in the region, utilities in Oregon shut off power to over tens of thousands of customers this past week to minimize the fire risk. More than 40,000 customers in the state were experiencing power outages on Saturday, according to estimates from Portland General Electric and Pacific Power.

Correction:

Sept. 13, 2022

An earlier version of this article misstated the distance between Eugene, Ore., and the towns of Oakridge and Westfir. They are about 40 miles southeast of Eugene, not 90 miles southeast.

Sept. 10, 2022, 3:38 p.m. ET

Cooler, wetter weather brings California a moment of relief.

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LOS ANGELES — For more than a week, Californians endured a heat wave that smashed records, pushed the state’s energy grid to the brink and parched the landscape, creating conditions ripe for catastrophic wildfires. Several new blazes ignited and quickly burned through bone-dry vegetation, sending thousands fleeing from their homes.

So residents felt exalted when Saturday came cooler and wetter than the days before.

“Thankfully, this historic heat wave is coming to an end,” said Cory Mueller, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento, where temperatures reached a record 116 degrees on Tuesday. “It’ll almost feel cold out there today compared to last week.”

He added: “That’s obviously kind of a joke, because it’ll still be in the 90s.”

Temperatures in Southern California were mostly in the 80s on Saturday, and forecasters predicted scattered showers through the weekend from the remnants of Tropical Storm Kay.

Across the region, residents saw gray skies and stepped into warm, damp weather that felt more like the weather in a rainforest than the baking sunshine they had grown accustomed to.

The arrival of the storm on Friday — one of the closest approaches of an intact tropical cyclone to California in decades — caused some hiccups across the region, largely because any rain this time of year is unusual. (For instance, 0.61 inches of rain fell on San Diego on Friday, breaking the record for that date of 0.09 inches, set in 1976, according to the National Weather Service.)

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the nation’s biggest public utility, warned customers about power outages caused by falling branches or palm fronds knocked off trees by the first significant rainfall in months. On Saturday, the agency said crews were working as quickly as they could to restore power to tens of thousands of customers.

Coastal flood advisories were in place on Saturday in some low-lying beach and island communities, while a flash flood watch was in effect in the southeast corner of the state, the National Weather Service said.

But though there were some toppled boats and muddy parking lots in beach towns where high tides sometimes inundate streets, significant flooding wasn’t reported in Southern California.

For firefighters and residents facing the state’s most dangerous active blazes, the weather on Saturday prompted sighs of relief — even if climate change ensures that any respite from dangerous fire conditions in California is temporary.

In Riverside County, east of Los Angeles, officials had expressed concerns that the rare brush with a tropical storm would make it much more difficult to fight the Fairview fire, which killed two people and injured one more as they tried to flee the fast-moving blaze not long after it started on Monday. Officials were worried that the storm would bring winds that would fan flames and that heavy rain could trigger flash flooding and mudslides on fire-scarred hillsides.

• Fires
• Burning
• Burned

• Air quality
• Good
• Hazardous

Fairview

Active 1 days Updated Tue. 2:58 AM PT

• 2,400 acres
• 5% contained
• +2,400 acres in past day

But by Friday evening, officials said that winds were much less intense than feared. And overnight, steady rain helped firefighters control the blaze, which had burned more than 28,300 acres and had destroyed or damaged about 30 buildings as of Saturday morning.

“There was fairly heavy rain overnight — probably the brunt of what Tropical Storm Kay was going to bring — over the area,” said Rob Roseen, a spokesman for Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency.

There were no reports of mudslides in the region.

The Fairview fire was just 5 percent contained by Friday morning. By Friday night, it was 40 percent contained, according to officials, and some evacuation orders had been eased to warnings.

Maryann Tassone spent two nights at an evacuation shelter in Hemet, not far from the blaze. On Saturday, she was arranging transportation home for her bedridden mother after the evacuation order for her parents’ mobile home park had been lifted.

Although Tropical Storm Kay did not end up exacerbating the fire that had sent her family fleeing, Ms. Tassone, 58, said she was not comforted by the weather patterns.

“I am scared that the weather is going to take us down eventually,” Ms. Tassone said. “Whether it is super hot, or whether it is super cold, raining or whatever, but if you notice every incident that’s going on anywhere in the United States is because it’s weather caused. That’s scary.”

Late on Saturday afternoon, state fire officials said that a privately owned helicopter that they had contracted to help with firefighting efforts crashed as it was landing at a nearby airport. The three people onboard, a pilot and two firefighters, sustained moderate injuries and were taken to a hospital. Mr. Roseen said he did not have information about what may have caused the crash.

The rain did not reach the Sierra Nevada foothills northeast of Sacramento, where the explosive Mosquito fire continued to rage uncontrolled, but the authorities said that the cooler temperatures and humidity on Friday and through the weekend were creating a crucial window for getting a handle on the blaze.

“Are we out of the woods yet? No, there’s still a long firefight ahead of us,” Rob Scott, a fire behavior analyst at the U.S. Forest Service, said on Saturday. But he added that the cooler weather and cloudiness were encouraging: “That’s going to help firefighters get a toehold in the environment and start containing the fire,” he said.

• Fires
• Burning
• Burned

• Air quality
• Good
• Hazardous

Mosquito

Active 1 days Updated Wed. 2:48 PM PT

• 6,000 acres
• 0% contained
• +6,000 acres in past day

On Friday night, the fire continued to grow, and by Saturday it had burned almost 34,000 acres, but officials said the fire’s recent spread had been slower than it had been in previous days.

Earlier in the week, experts had been alarmed by a pyrocumulus cloud that formed because the Mosquito fire was sending plumes of smoke and ash spewing 40,000 feet into the air.

In Cameron Park, a community southwest of the Mosquito fire where many of the roughly 6,000 people ordered to evacuate had gathered at a community center, some said they were hopeful.

“Thursday, it felt like it was extremely scary, because the fire was spreading really quickly,” said Olivia Moreno, 33, who fled Garden Valley with her family. Now, “I’m feeling a little bit better,” she said.

Mr. Mueller, the Sacramento meteorologist, said that the outlook was positive. Humidity could reach as high as 40 percent by Monday, up from the single digits over the past week.

“The next week looks promising,” he said.

Beyond that, though, he said he could not provide predictions.

Climate scientists noted that the duration of the heat wave had left many parts of California drier than they had been, meaning wildlands in those areas were primed to burn. State public health officials warned that wildfire smoke continued to be a hazard across huge swaths of the state.

And the peak of California’s wildfire season, experts have said, could still be on the horizon.

Sept. 10, 2022, 2:46 p.m. ET

April Rubin

Hurricane Earl is expected to weaken as it heads toward Newfoundland in Canada, bringing strong winds through Sunday. After upgrading Earl from a tropical storm to a hurricane on Tuesday night, the National Hurricane Center said the designation should drop to an “extratropical low” on Saturday. Still, swells from the storm are expected to cause life-threatening surf and rip currents along the U.S. East Coast and in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland through the weekend. No coastal watches or warnings were in effect as of Saturday morning.

Sept. 10, 2022, 2:11 p.m. ET

Vik Jolly

Reporting from Southern California

Overnight rain brought relief for firefighters battling the Fairview fire near Hemet, Calif., which has burned 28,307 acres. For the first time in days, the fire did not grow overnight, and the latest figures released by fire officials Saturday morning showed the fire was 40 percent contained, also unchanged from 12 hours earlier. “There was fairly heavy rain overnight — probably the brunt of what Tropical Storm Kay was going to bring —over the area,” Rob Roseen of Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency, said. Intermittent rain was expected throughout the day. The blaze is still threatening more than 8,700 structures, but that’s down from the 10,000 noted in a previous update from officials.

(from Vik Jolly)

Sept. 10, 2022, 1:12 p.m. ET

Jill Cowan

Reporting from Los Angeles

Saturday dawned with a desperately needed respite from the oppressive heat that had pummeled California for more than a week. In Northern California, where heat records were shattered day after day last week, meteorologists said the heat wave was at last coming to an end. Temperatures, forecasters said, were expected to be as much as 20 degrees cooler than Friday. “It’ll almost feel cold out there today compared to last week,” said Cory Mueller, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. “That’s obviously kind of a joke, because it’ll still be in the 90s.”

Sept. 10, 2022, 11:29 a.m. ET

Kellen Browning

Reporting from Northern California

The Mosquito fire northeast of Sacramento continued to grow overnight, and now stands at 33,754 acres. Though it remains zero percent contained, the fire's recent spread has been slower than the explosive growth Thursday that alarmed firefighters, and officials said this weekend could be a key time to begin getting a handle on the blaze if the weather remains bearable.

Sept. 10, 2022, 1:37 a.m. ET

John Yoon

Cedar Creek fire in western Oregon doubled in size to about 36,000 acres between Wednesday and Friday, prompting officials in Lane County to proclaim an evacuation order on Friday evening to areas around the cities of Oakridge and Westfir. “Danger is current and imminent,” the county sheriff’s office said on social media, “and you should evacuate now.”

Sept. 10, 2022, 12:29 a.m. ET

Kellen Browning

Kellen Browning reported from Placerville, Calif., northeast of Sacramento.

Mosquito Fire near Sacramento is at a ‘tipping point,’ fire officials say.

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PLACERVILLE, Calif. — The Mosquito fire, a 30,000-acre blaze raging through the Sierra Nevada foothills northeast of Sacramento, has calmed slightly Friday after explosive growth a day earlier, fire officials said.

“We are at a tipping point,” Rob Scott, a fire behavior analyst at the U.S. Forest Service, said after a meeting with residents at a school auditorium in Placerville, about 20 miles south of the fire lines. “No large fire growth, no giant column, no picture on Facebook at the end of the day looking like a volcano going off?,” he told the residents. “That’s a good day, considering what we’ve been seeing.”

The fire, the largest of several that have been burning across the state in the middle of an oppressive heat wave, remained uncontained. It had logged alarming growth on Thursday, growing by about 17,000 acres in just four hours, despite an all-out attack from firefighters, bulldozer crews and helicopters dropping water.

Efforts to contain the blaze, which began on Tuesday, had been unsuccessful because of the “sheer force” of the fire, high temperatures and steep canyons that could trap and endanger firefighters, said Dusty Martin, a Cal Fire incident commander.

“They’ve been in one heck of a firefight for the last couple of days,” he said.

On Friday, the conditions improved in firefighters’ favor, with slightly cooler temperatures, low winds and hovering smoke, according to fire officials.

• Fires
• Burning
• Burned

• Air quality
• Good
• Hazardous

Mosquito

Active 1 days Updated Wed. 2:48 PM PT

• 6,000 acres
• 0% contained
• +6,000 acres in past day

This rural region of the state can be a tinderbox during late summer, and residents here are no stranger to wildfires. Several officials recalled last summer’s Caldor fire, which burned through more than 200,000 acres and threatened the Lake Tahoe region.

“I’m pretty sure I know what a lot of you are feeling and thinking, going through it in the past,” said John D’Agostini, the sheriff of El Dorado County. Nearly 6,000 people have been evacuated, according to the sheriff’s office.

In Placerville, haze from the fire blanketed the hills and the air quality was rated “hazardous.” The greater Sacramento area also endured smoky skies Friday. The Mosquito fire has been burning so intensely that it has created its own weather patterns, spawning a pyrocumulus cloud on Thursday that sent up plumes of smoke and ash as high as 40,000 feet in the air.

Michael Darrow, a Placerville resident, said he had packed belongings in a trailer and was ready to evacuate if needed. He said he’d learned from the people who waited too long to leave their homes and died during 2018’s Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif. that it was not worth taking the risk to protect his property.

“Once it gets over the hill, I’m not staying,” said Mr. Darrow, 73, who owns five acres of land nearby. He added: “I should have sold it last year.”