Extreme weather is on the rise across the United States, according to a Jan. 10 report by NASA. Last year was the hottest ever on record, and in the first weeks of 2025, environmental crises — such as the Southern California wildfires — have continued record-breaking trends. For many Dartmouth students, these crises thousands of miles away are in fact close to home.
According to the California Department of Forest and Fire Protection, since last week, Los Angeles County has experienced some of the worst wildfires in the area’s history in terms of acres of land destroyed.
Environmental studies and biology professor Doug Bolger, who has studied the impacts of urban development on Los Angeles’s ecosystems, said Los Angeles-based wildfires usually begin with the “only natural fire starters” — lightning strikes.
In this instance, though, several key factors likely contributed to the extent and severity of the ongoing fires, he said. Over the last eight months, a lack of rain and strong Santa Ana winds — which come from the dry deserts east of the county — have created “highly flammable” and “dangerous” conditions, he explained. Another contributing factor is vapor pressure deficiency, which occurs when “hot, dry air sucks moisture out of vegetation, making it more flammable,” he said.
“With these hot, dry winds and this dry vegetation, and the winds pushing it, then it just becomes an unmanageable situation,” Bolger said.
Jack Coleman ’26 is a resident of the Pacific Palisades, where the fires first broke out on the morning of Jan. 7. According to Coleman, the largest of three main fires in the area destroyed multiple residences along his street and “damaged” his family’s home. While he was on campus during the fire, Coleman explained that he was in contact with his family while they were forced to evacuate early in the afternoon of Jan. 8.
“For about an hour and a half, my parents and my grandma couldn’t get out,” Coleman said. “That was the most stressful part of this whole thing — being on the phone with them, watching them on Find My Friends and Life360.”
The “relief” he felt once his family had evacuated to safety was the beginning of the “long process” of uncertainty that followed, Coleman said.
Logan Byun ’28, who is from La Cañada, which is located near the Eaton fire in East Los Angeles, said his elementary school, Loma Alta Elementary — where he had “so many core memories” — has burned down.
“I’m really going to miss it, but also it’s crazy to think about,” Byun said. “Something so close to you has gone away.”
The distance between Dartmouth and the West Coast has led some students to feel removed from the wildfires. Dylan Smith ’28, who is from Playa del Rey — a coastal neighborhood on the westside of Los Angeles — said she “felt super disconnected” when looking at photos of the devastation.
“If I weren’t [in Hanover], that’s where I would be,” she said. “That’s where my home is.”
In the immediate aftermath of their losses, students like Coleman have reported struggling with their grief.
“I wish I could be with my family supporting them,” Coleman said. “At the same time, it’s so much easier [at Dartmouth]. I can choose when I want to look at photos. … I don’t have to confront it, so for a lot of time, I haven’t.”
Closer to campus, shifting jet streams — the boundary between cold air to the north and warmer air to the south — are bringing cold air from the North Pole across much of the northern United States, according to earth sciences professor Erich Osterberg. This weather phenomenon, called a polar vortex, occurs when cold weather that is north of a jet stream moves southward. On Sunday, the North American jet stream will “dip” south, bringing cold air from Canada across the continental United States “all the way to Texas,” Osterberg explained.
The polar vortex will “mainly” affect the Midwest, he added, but the jet stream will “slowly shift eastward,” resulting in temperatures as low as -2°F in Hanover next week. In such conditions, hypothermia and frostbite are “real concerns,” Dartmouth Student Health Services director Mark Reed wrote in a campus-wide email.
Despite the intense cold, the incoming polar vortex will occur as a result of a “pretty common” phenomenon caused by “random” changes in the “waviness” of the jet stream, Osterberg explained.
“[The polar vortex] is something we expect to see in the wintertime when the jet stream gets these big waves like this,” he said. “The jet stream will get more wavy and less wavy sometimes and that’s a pretty random process. It’s almost like you stir up a bowl of soup and you have little swirls in it. These are really hard to predict because they’re really chaotic. The question we’re asking is whether the jet stream is getting wavier due to climate change.”
Numerous and nearly concurrent extreme weather events across the country have raised questions about the human impact on climate. Geography professor Justin Mankin, who studies climate variability, said he is currently exploring the causes of the Los Angeles fires in his class GEOG 18.01, “Climate Extremes On A Warming Planet.”
“Global warming has made those wildfires worse, but with [regards to] the windstorm [the Santa Ana winds],that propagated the advance of these wildfires, … I don’t think that we have evidence to suggest this is the case,” Mankin said. “It is a combination of things.”
Despite their grief, students from affected areas have found solace in community. The support from friends and professors has been “truly overwhelming and moving,” Coleman said.
“To everyone who knows someone from L.A. and took the time to reach out … that made a real difference,” he said.
Jack Coleman ’26 is a member of The Dartmouth’s podcast team. He was not involved in the writing or editing of this story.
