A Wildfire-Predicting Startup Tries to Help Insurers Cope With Climate Change

Climate change is making California’s fire seasons more severe, but the conditions that lead to any single fire remain consistent: dry weather, overgrown brush, wind speed, and wind direction. Private companies and public agencies are racing to develop technology to monitor these conditions, in the hopes of understanding how wildfires spread—and predicting them before they happen.

As a bigger proportion of the country’s most populous state burns, the stakes of getting those predictions right goes up, too. Six of the seven largest fires in California’s history have occurred since August of last year, and extreme drought throughout the American West has experts concerned that this year’s season is shaping up to be particularly bad. Human lives are on the line. So are billions of dollars.