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"Research on Catalina Research on found that the number of native plant species in an area increases the season after a burn," says the Catalina Island Conservancy's Web site.

That's good, I guess, but it's really hard to watch this one, just as summer moves in. It's even harder to watch flames press down on the town of Avalon than it was to watch a quarter of Griffith Park burn. The Catalina fire is already huge; only ground crews can fight the fire at night, and, well, it looks bad. For context, last year's lightning-sparked fire on the Island scorched 1,200 remote acres, and that seemed huge.

To be really selfish: This means two of my favorite camping and hiking spots in the world are on fire right now: Catalina Island, 27 miles off the Southern California mainland coast, and the Gunflint Trail, where the state of Minnesota meets the province of Ontario (one segment of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness; on the Canadian side, Quetico Provincial Park). Thirty-thousand acres have burned up there as of today. It's weird. I've seen ice on those lakes in early May. And, as we know, fire season in California doesn't begin in earnest until at least July, and even that's early.

It's going to be an interesting summer. I'm starting to wonder if Venice is going to blow, too. (Did I say anything about climate change? No. I didn't. It's just a really bad, widespread drought [see earlier post.])

If you, like me, like to follow fires around the country from the comfort of your home computer, or you, also like me, want to know where next to drag your ambulance-chasing, pyromaniac self to see what's happening, these links might help:

The Southern California Geographic Area Coordination Center has links to current incident reports, weather and "predictive services," such as this PDF document outlining what to expect this fire season (big surprise: "Earlier than normal start to fire season.").

The California Department of Forestry provides up-to-date information on major fires in the state. Click here.

InciWeb is a place where you can keep track of fires over the country; you can read the news releases, subscribe to RSS feeds or follow first-hand accounts from the front lines. It currently tracks only fires in U.S. Forest Service land, but it should expand nationally this year.

And this page, from the Association for Outdoor and Environmental Education, has more links about local fire than you can shake a burning stick at.

Also, some interesting insights here about the Island firefighting crew.

More to come in the morning.

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