Orange haze in California

The 2020 wildfire season on the West coast of the United States was the largest on record.

On Wednesday, millions of Californians woke up to an eerie scene: the haze from unprecedented wildfires turned the sky orange and red. Smoke hovered over densely populated areas.

Although wildfires are common in this region, climate change is rapidly exacerbating the problem. This year has been a terrible turning point in this trend: according to New York Times, at the moment the flames have consumed about 20 times larger areas than on the same day last year.

According to NBC News, thousands of people were forced to evacuate from California, Oregon and Washington, and eight people were killed. Millions more citizens are exposed to dangerous weather conditions, including ashy "snow" in several places.

Photos from San Francisco are reminiscent of post-Apocalypse movies.

All of this prompted California Governor Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency in August. The situation has since escalated as the state is experiencing record heat this week. On Saturday, the highest temperature on record was recorded in Los Angeles County: +49.4.

This year's catastrophic wildfires, which are likely to rage for weeks before the rainy season, demonstrate the frightening but predictable consequences of climate crises.

It's tempting to pin the blame on people like a couple who recently set a devastating fire during a party to reveal their child's gender. Ultimately, however, climate change is the result of a broader set of factors.

"Of course, people should be careful and take responsibility for this," NPR said Leah Stokes is a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. — But the fact is that climate change is the real reason for what we're seeing right now."