“Elevated” Wildfires spread from California to Nevada

Last Friday, a massive wildfire started to burn in the Mojave National Preserve in California and crossed the state lines into Nevada Sunday. As of Tuesday morning, it is heading to the East, and its behavior is bizarre. According to CNN, it is spawning “fire whirls” and creating dangerous conditions for firefighters.

It burnt up more than 80,000 acres and is still scorching the land, helped further by gusts. Firefighters are extinguishing and controlling the York Fire as of Tuesday morning. “As of 6 am this morning August 1, the #YorkFire is at 80,437 acres and 23% containment. An infrared flight was completed last night, which provided a better assessment of fire size and activity,” according to the National Parks Service on Tuesday.

Massive Joshua Trees were burnt down by York Fire. Although Joshua tree is not much adaptive to the aftermath of fires, some of them will resprout if conditions will be met.

According to San Francisco Chronicle,

“many Eastern Joshua trees — one of two types of the iconic desert tree — will be killed by the flames, said Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity.” He added that “When the tally is done, it will total tens of thousands, and maybe hundreds of thousands of Joshua trees,” which will be gone most of them by the York Fire in the Mojave Desert.