Environment

Hurricane Irma wiped out nearly 50% of Florida’s iconic orange crop when it buffeted the state with 160 mph winds and a massive storm surge last month, sending orange concentrate futures rocketing higher and stoking speculation that the state’s embattled orange growers – already struggling to fend off a worsening “greening” epidemic that’s constrained production over the past decade – might never recover.

After slackening earlier in the week, the dry, nearly hurricane-force winds that have been fanning the flames in Northern California picked up again overnight, revitalizing what some are already describing as the most devastating wildfires in the state’s modern history.

Scientists from the US Geological Survey who breezily informed the public that there’s “nothing to worry about” with regards to the Yellowstone caldera, a supervolcano that should it erupt could cause potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths, should be eating their words.

Wildfires that have been raging across Northern California’s “wine country” since Sunday have destroyed at least four wineries and seriously damaged at least nine more just as the season’s harvest came to an end. The damage could leave one of the state’s signature industry’s hobbled for years, according to NBC.

As Santa Rosa residents scramble to flee the path of no fewer than 15 major wildfires raging across eight Northern California counties, police in the Sonoma county seat have instituted a sunrise-to-sunset curfew as they crack down on unscrupulous looters who’ve been raiding abandoned homes.