The Dixie fire is now the largest single wildfire in California history. At more than 600,000 acres, it’s been burning in Northern California for over a month and has destroyed more than 500 homes in areas that never imagined wildfires to be a year-round risk.

That inferno continues at the same time that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released its bleakest report yet, saying: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.”

Today, we welcome our good-natured Masters of Disasters — L.A. Times earthquake reporter Ron Lin, coastal reporter Rosanna Xia and wildfire reporter Alex Wigglesworth — to make sense of these dark and hot times.

More reading:

Dixie fire generates fire whirl, pyrocumulonimbus cloud at 40,000 feet

PG&E power line suspected in Dixie fire was set to be buried underground in safety move

California builds a ‘Noah’s Ark’ to protect wildlife from extinction by fire and heat