Wildfires were burning mostly out of control in San Diego County this week as an unseasonably intense heat wave and strong, dry winds have prompted the governor to declare a state of emergency.San Diego schools were closed, while evacuation orders forced tens of thousands of people from their homes. Nearly 10,000 acres have already gone up in flames.The worst fire, near San Marcos, was only 5 percent contained earlier this week. The California State University-San Marcos campus was evacuated, and this week's commencement was canceled, per a CNN report.Offshore Santa Ana winds helped fan the flames, producing smoke plumes visible from space. Santa Ana winds funnel warm and dry air toward the coast when a strong high pressure moves over the deserts of inland California, reversing the typical west-to-east flow from the ocean that usually keeps Southern California so beautiful and temperate. During times of drought, Santa Ana winds bring humidities down to dangerously low levels, and they can blow up to hurricane force in the mountains, creating the perfect environment for explosive fire growth.Relatedly, new data released this week showed 100 percent of the state of California is now in "severe," "extreme," or "exceptional" drought, the three most severe categories. Earlier this month, the governor's Office of Emergency Services warned that this summer poses unprecedented wildfire risk.Temperatures earlier this week reached the triple digits, according to the National Weather Service. Some of the week's temperatures, like the 102-degree reading in Oxnard, were the hottest ever recorded in the month of May. Oxnard's oppressive heat was strikingly out of season: It was more than a month earlier than the previous first 100 plus degree day and just two degrees shy of the all-time record set on Sept. 22, 1939. Records have been kept in Oxnard since 1923.It didn't take long for local officials to point out the connection to climate change, which scientists say is lengthening the fire season in California by several days per year. The Western wildfire season is now 78 days longer than it was in the mid-1980s. This year, due to worsening drought, the season effectively never stopped."Firenadoes" are actually fairly common in intense wildfires. Here's the science: Fires obviously generate a lot of heat, and heat rises. Heated air rises even faster when surrounded by relatively cooler air on the edges of major fires, and vortexes can form in particularly strong updrafts. If those vortexes contain flame, you've got yourself a firenado.If the fire is large enough, it can also create its own weather. Pyrocumulus clouds, or billowing puffy white clouds created by the rising air above a wildfire, have even been known to trigger lightning storms, sparking fresh fires nearby.The science behind the California firenadoes