Abnormal is the new normal for Western wildfires, with increasingly bigger and more destructive blazes, experts say. But understanding the risks can help avert disaster.

Throughout Western North America, millions of people live in high-risk wildfire zones thanks to increasingly dry, hot summers and abundant organic fuel in nearby wildlands. Researchers say that’s a recipe for disaster.

This year, the National Interagency Fire Center predicts a heavy wildfire season for areas along the West Coast from California into Canada due to a heavy crop of grasses and other plants that developed in the wake of a wet winter.

In California, the largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, has already begun fire hazard-prevention power cut-offs that will likely affect hundreds of thousands of customers in the months ahead. Meanwhile, insurance claims for wildfires that devastated parts of California this past November recently topped $12 billion—a total that represents the state’s largest-ever economic loss from fire.

Here, experts Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment; Rebecca Miller, a PhD student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources; and Michael Goss, a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, discuss what to expect from the wildfire season this year and into the future:

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