California escaped deadly wildfires this summer. The danger isn’t over yet

An unusually wet winter tamped down conditions so far in 2023, but experts say the state can't afford to rely on luck

As the Labor Day holiday weekend draws the summer to a close, it's been an unusually quiet season for fires across the American west.

Roughly 80,000 hectares (2m acres) have burned across the country so far, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), roughly 61% less than the 10-year average for this time of year. The decrease has been particularly pronounced in the fire-prone west, which has grown accustomed to seeing swaths of their parched forests and browning hillsides ignite but has largely been given a reprieve from a summer of smoke-filled skies.