California fire's now a gigafire, a rare designation for a blaze that burns at least a million acres

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https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/06/us/gigafire-california-august-complex-trnd/index.html



(CNN)Wildfires have gotten so extreme in recent years that experts have had to coin new terms to describe their increasingly massive scale. Enter the "gigafire" -- a term for a blaze that burns at least a million acres of land and a level above the "megafire," which burns more than 100,000 acres.

California recorded its first gigafire in modern history on Monday, after the expansive August Complex in the northern part of the state scorched more than a million acres. The August Complex is now the largest fire in California's history, according to Cal Fire.

The fire, which is now burning across several counties, began as a series of separate fires sparked by lightning strikes in August. Those smaller fires later morphed into the larger complex that firefighters are now battling. The blaze is 58% contained as of Tuesday morning. The record set by the August Complex comes during an already record-setting year in California.

Blazes across the state have burned four million acres so far, more than double the previous record set in 2018, the state's fire agency said Sunday. This fire season has also produced five of the six largest wildfires in California's history.

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