More lightning, more wildfire ⚡️

John Muir once wrote “everything is refreshed” by a summer storm in the Sierra Nevada. But then, as now, the lightning strikes that come with them pose a perennial wildfire risk.

Fires raging in the Sierra foothills have burned nearly 14,000 acres, prompted evacuations and destroyed the historic Gold Rush town of Chinese Camp. Lightning ignited these fires — an occurrence that a new study says will likely happen more often in California, reports CalMatters’ Rachel Becker. 

From Tuesday to Wednesday, dry thunderstorms rolled across the Central Valley and the Bay Area. Though exactly how many lightning strikes hit California during that 31-hour period is unclear, an expert at the National Lightning Safety Council estimated that 11,000 bolts of electricity struck the ground.

During that same time period at least 45 new fires ignited, said Cal Fire battalion chief David Acuña.

• Acuña: “We can’t collectively say they’re all lightning fires, but we can say that there were a large number of lightning strikes and a large number of fires.”

As hotter, drier conditions become more common due to climate change, researchers found that lightning is more likely to strike when dry lands are at risk for igniting. From 2030 to 2060, some Western states could see as many as 12 more days of lightning striking the ground per year — with parts of northeast California and the eastern Sierra potentially seeing an increase as well.

• Dmitri Kalashnikov, the study’s lead author: “You get this very hazardous situation in terms of fire risk, where you have lightning that hits the dry vegetation. You’ll get an ignition, but then there’s no downpours to extinguish the flame — so that fire can grow.”

Read more here.

For years, the California Department of Motor Vehicles made millions from selling towed cars without giving the owners much of a chance to claim the money. But that’s changing now, after CalMatters published an investigation on the practice earlier this year. Find out what the DMV is doing from CalMatters’ Byrhonda Lyons.

Science test scores for K-12 California schools remained relatively stagnant following the 2016 launch of a new science curriculum — raising concern among some education experts who say that science should be prioritized more, writes CalMatters’ Carolyn Jones.

Three years after Next Generation Science Standards rolled out, California assessed students in science for the first time, with only 30% of students meeting the standard on the state exam in 2019. Last year it was only 30.7%. Wide gaps in test scores also exist among groups of students, particularly among low-income and Black students. 

There are a few reasons for this: Carrying out the curriculum was especially hard through remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic because the curriculum required hands-on projects. When in-person learning returned, schools also focused their recovery efforts on literacy, math and attendance.

Read more here.

Speaking of pandemic-era learning: Carolyn also reports on the settlement reached Wednesday between a group of families and Los Angeles Unified, which will affect about 250,000 students. In 2020, the families joined a class-action lawsuit to sue the district, alleging that it wasn’t doing enough to ensure students were getting a quality education during the pandemic. The settlement requires the district to offer various academic support, including one-on-one tutoring through 2028. Read more here.

With temperatures in some California prisons rising to 95 degrees each summer, and climate change driving temperatures to even higher levels, state prison officials are rolling out a $38 million pilot program to cool some prison cells, writes CalMatters’ Jeanne Kuang.

After mounting pressure from activists, lawmakers and judges, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation plans to conduct a test of cooling systems and new insulation at three of the department’s 31 prisons. The pilot, which the Legislature approved this year, will run over the next four years and results are expected by 2029.

But critics say the pilot doesn’t go far enough. It will only affect parts of facilities that house about 8,000 of California’s 91,000 inmates, and no further concrete action is required afterwards.

Read more here.

More on prisons: The California Rehabilitation Center in Norco will close in 2026, the fifth state prison to shut as the incarcerated population falls. CalMatters’ Adam Ashton and video strategy director Robert Meeks have a video segment on the forthcoming closure as part of our partnership with PBS SoCal. Watch it here.

SoCalMatters airs at 5:58 p.m. weekdays on PBS SoCal.