wildfires
Indonesia's Dry-Ice Haze Trial Will Be Hard to Judge, and Harder to Scale
Palembang's airport read 50 meters of visibility on the morning Indonesia's first dry-ice flight was due. A cheap experiment is worth trying, but haze that swings on its own and 1.5 tons of ice against a city's worth of air make success hard to prove.
PG&E Readies Shutoffs for 70,000 Customers Without a Red Flag Warning
The notice list is a ceiling, not a forecast. Here is how PG&E's fuel-moisture and ignition models pick circuits, why Paradise is in scope, and how often warnings end in outages.
Why Wildfire Smoke Can Smell Like Burning Plastic
The acrid, chemical smell in wildfire smoke isn't your imagination — it's benzene and formaldehyde, and sometimes it's literally burning plastic.
California's Fire Insurer Just Needed Its Own Bailout
After the 2025 Los Angeles fires, California's insurer of last resort needed a $1 billion rescue, its first since 1993. Homeowners who never filed a claim are footing part of the bill.
Pyrocumulonimbus, Explained: When Wildfires Make Their Own Storms
When a wildfire burns hot enough, it can build a genuine thunderstorm above itself, one that sparks new fires with dry lightning and can loft smoke into the stratosphere for months.
The Surprisingly Strict Rules for Naming a Wildfire
Bogus Fire. Dinosaur Fire. Not Creative Fire. Behind every odd wildfire name is a strict federal rulebook, and no committee, just whoever answers the call first.