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On June 19, 2015, a slow-moving low-pressure system with spectacular thunderstorms that produced little rain began making its way through Alaska. By the time the storms finally petered out about a week later, 61,000 bolts of lightning had been unleashed on a boreal forest in the state. No one had ever seen anything quite like it, not even in 2004, when 8,500 lightning strikes were recorded in a single day. The 2015 storms triggered 270 fires in Alaska. Just over 5 million acres of forest burned and 70 homes were lost. Mercifully, no one died. Though this wave of fires occurred about a month later in the year than the record-breaking season in 2004, everything else followed a similar pattern. Lightning was the trigger for most of the fires, while heat and tinder-dry conditions fueled the flames. Human-driven climate change was ...