Hot rocks blamed for California wildfires

[Douglas]

A landslide of "hot rocks" blamed for California fires. Apparently the 'hot rock' mystery has not been solved.

http://www.earthfiles.com/news/news.cfm?ID=938&category=Environment

http://www.darkplanetonline.com/blog/2005/07/584-degrees-f-hot-rock-mystery.html

[Thomas Kirby]

A landslide of "hot rocks" blamed for California fires. Apparently the 'hot rock' mystery has not been solved.

http://www.earthfiles.com/news/news.cfm?ID=938&category=Environment

http://www.darkplanetonline.com/blog/2005/07/584-degrees-f-hot-rock-mystery.html

 

More than one well-known possibility comes to mind. One is magma travelling close enough to the surface there to cause that much heating. Another is a pocket of steam under pressure. There could even be an underground fire. Heated organic matter that is below the ignition point becomes more and more flammable if it is situated so that vapors and oils can accumulate. Eventually a hard look will set them off.

 

Volcanoes do happen this way. They sneak up once in a while and appear somewhere like in a farmer's field where before there was flat ground, like Paricutin. These hills look like some of the land has slipped before. Magma rides pretty close to the surface in some places. The Santa Barbara area is geothermally active, with a number of hot springs. The magma under Yellowstone is 8000 feet down, and that's only moderately deep for oil well drilling. The deepest hand-dug water well in the world is 12,500 feet deep.