Qualla: Twelve Thousand Bolts https://qualla.com/august-2020-california-lightning-wildfires en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/9/q/d/v/august-2020-california-lightning-wildfires-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Twelve Thousand Bolts https://qualla.com/august-2020-california-lightning-wildfires Twelve Thousand Bolts: Introduction https://qualla.com/august-2020-california-lightning-wildfires/ Photo credit Inklein, CC BY-SA 4.0. The National Weather Service office in the Bay Area used a word rarely found in official forecasts: "insane." It was the early morning of August 16, 2020, and in the span of thirty minutes, 200 lightning bolts had hammered the region. By the time the storm system passed, over 12,000 strikes had been recorded across Northern California in a 72-to-96-hour siege. Nearly every bolt was dry lightning -- brilliant, violent, and accompanied by almost no rain. Each strike landed in a landscape parched by record heat and years of drought. Within days, 650 wildfires were burning simultaneously, and the scale of destruction would produce a single fire larger than any in California's modern history.

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/q/d/v/august-2020-california-lightning-wildfires-wp/9qdv-twelve-thousand-bolts-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Twelve Thousand Bolts: A Storm Born from a Dying Hurricane https://qualla.com/august-2020-california-lightning-wildfires/ Photo credit Inklein, CC BY-SA 4.0. The atmospheric chain of events that produced the lightning siege was extraordinary. Tropical Storm Fausto, weakening off the coast of Baja California, shed a plume of moist, unstable air that abnormal winds carried northward -- streaming from as far as 1,000 miles offshore into ...

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/q/d/v/august-2020-california-lightning-wildfires-wp/9qdv-twelve-thousand-bolts-a-storm-born-from-a-dying-hurricane.mp3 0:06 2 full Twelve Thousand Bolts: Six Hundred and Fifty Fires https://qualla.com/august-2020-california-lightning-wildfires/ Photo credit Inklein, CC BY-SA 4.0. The sheer number of simultaneous ignitions overwhelmed firefighting resources in a way California had never experienced. Many of the fires started on August 16 and 17. Some were quickly knocked down at an acre or two. Others, fanned by dry winds and feeding on parched brush, expl...

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/q/d/v/august-2020-california-lightning-wildfires-wp/9qdv-twelve-thousand-bolts-six-hundred-and-fifty-fires.mp3 0:06 3 full Twelve Thousand Bolts: Door to Door in Vacaville https://qualla.com/august-2020-california-lightning-wildfires/ Photo credit Inklein, CC BY-SA 4.0. On August 19, the LNU complex fire raced toward Vacaville, a city of 100,000 in Solano County. Police officers and firefighters went door to door, urging residents to leave immediately. Families fled with whatever they could grab -- documents, pets, the clothes they were wearing....

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/q/d/v/august-2020-california-lightning-wildfires-wp/9qdv-twelve-thousand-bolts-door-to-door-in-vacaville.mp3 0:06 4 full Twelve Thousand Bolts: The Monster That Set the Record https://qualla.com/august-2020-california-lightning-wildfires/ Photo credit Inklein, CC BY-SA 4.0. While the Bay Area complexes drew the most immediate attention, the largest single fire was burning farther north. The August Complex, ignited by lightning in the Mendocino National Forest, grew steadily through September. On September 10, it surpassed the 2018 Mendocino Complex ...

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/q/d/v/august-2020-california-lightning-wildfires-wp/9qdv-twelve-thousand-bolts-the-monster-that-set-the-record.mp3 0:06 5 full Twelve Thousand Bolts: The Day the Sky Turned Orange https://qualla.com/august-2020-california-lightning-wildfires/ Photo credit Inklein, CC BY-SA 4.0. On September 9, 2020, residents of the San Francisco Bay Area woke to an apocalyptic sky. Wildfire smoke, lofted high into the atmosphere by the intense heat of the fires, had been carried back over the region by offshore winds. The smoke layer filtered sunlight so completely tha...

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]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/q/d/v/august-2020-california-lightning-wildfires-wp/9qdv-twelve-thousand-bolts-the-day-the-sky-turned-orange.mp3 0:06 6 full