Tuesday morning started with strong thunderstorms roaring across the San Joaquin Valley and surrounding foothills. They didn’t produce much rain, but they did have hundreds of lightning strikes - a bad combination for this time of year. We haven’t had significant rain in the Valley in over 4 months, so the trees and brush are bone dry. Add the spark of a lightning strikes, and they’ll ignite easily and quickly, which is what happened. There are new fires south of Coalinga, west of Mariposa, and a complex of 10 fires just north of that, in Tuolumne County, south or Sonora. Our air quality was steadily getting worse because of the Garnet Fire. Now, these new fires may push it into the Unhealthy range. #california #garnetfire #thunderstorm #cafire #video #fire #airquality #fresno #lightning #tcuseptemberlightningcomplex