The Woodside Fire along the Sonoma coast spread in a highly unusual manner: Besides burning from tree to tree and shrub to shrub, it jumped from coastal headland to coastal headland, carried by embers blown over the ocean.
While ember cast is not an uncommon way to drive a wildfire, especially when winds are strong, the fanning of hot, burning particles over cold Pacific waters is possible only with a rare alignment of conditions, which took shape north of the community of Jenner this week, says climate scientist Daniel Swain.
“I did a double take,” Swain told the Chronicle, after looking at maps that showed the Woodside Fire hopping across two ocean coves, each about a quarter-mile wide, near Salt Point State Park on Thursday. “If there are lots of embers being generated with the heavy duff and conifer forest (on one side of the cove) and having similarly receptive fuels on the other side of the cove, this is not the most significant spotting event we’ve seen, but it’s just the particulars of this situation that are so unusual.”…