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Across a hellish landscape of smoke and ash, authorities in Oregon, California and Washington State battled to contain mega-wildfires on Sunday as shifting winds threatened to accelerate blazes that have burned an unimaginable swath of land across the West. The arrival of the stronger winds on Sunday tested the resolve of fire crews already exhausted by weeks of combating blazes that have consumed around 5 million acres of desiccated forests, incinerated numerous communities and created what in many places was measured as the worst air quality on the planet. (Fuller and Healy, 9/13)

Fearing one disaster will feed another, relief groups are putting some people who fled their homes during West Coast wildfires into hotels to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, stringing up shower curtains to separate people in group shelters and delivering box lunches instead of setting up buffets. Large disaster response organizations like the American Red Cross are still operating some traditional shelters in gyms and churches, where they require masks, clean and disinfect often and try to keep evacuees at least 6 feet (2 meters) apart. The groups say they can reduce the risk of COVID-19 in a shelter but can’t keep people safe if they don’t evacuate from the flames. (Boone and Cline, 9/13)

When President Trump flies to California on Monday to assess the state’s raging forest fires, he will come face to face with the grim consequences of a reality he has stubbornly refused to accept: the devastating effects of a warming planet. To the global scientific community, the acres of scorched earth and ash-filled skies across the American West are the tragic, but predictable, result of accelerating climate change. Nearly two years ago, federal government scientists concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels could triple the frequency of severe fires across the Western states. (Shear and Davenport, 9/13)

David Legates, a University of Delaware professor of climatology who has spent much of his career questioning basic tenets of climate science, has been hired for a top position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Legates has a long history of using his position as an academic scientist to publicly cast doubt on climate science. His appointment to NOAA comes as Americans face profound threats stoked by climate change, from the vast, deadly wildfires in the West to an unusually active hurricane season in the South and East. (Hersher and Palca, 9/12)