Firefighters are working to contain devastating wildfires in California that have killed at least 10 people and led to thousands more evacuating. More than 9,000 structures have been destroyed.

The images from Los Angeles show densely populated neighborhoods engulfed in flame and skies choked by smoke. It’s enough to conjure the memories of the Canadian wildfires that led to dangerous air quality and bizarre, otherworldly skies in Baltimore in 2023.

And it’s enough to draw the question: Could the types of large, explosive wildfires seen out west ever happen in Maryland?

The geography of Maryland makes it unlikely, experts said. The region is humid, less susceptible to high winds and has vegetation that’s less prone to flash burns.

“I don’t think we’re as likely to see the explosive types of fires,” said Bill Koffel, a professor in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at the University of Maryland. “We could have some fires in Maryland in some remote areas.”

Those events are more likely to be seen as brush fires or forest fires, Koffel said. The vegetation in Maryland holds more moisture than the vegetation that catches and spreads fire so quickly in California. Maryland is also a humid state, and moisture in the air makes it harder for fire to spread.

One of the bigger contributing factors to the spread of the fires in California is the “hurricane force” winds, Koffel said. The Santa Ana Winds in California are dry and move fast — perfect conditions for fire.

“If you think about Maryland, I won’t say every high wind event that we have is associated with some type of storm activity, but a lot of them are,” Koffel said. “When we have hurricane force winds, we also tend to have a lot of rain.”

A notable exception was the recent fire at Camp Small — that fire burned through piles of logs and debris in Woodberry on a windy night without any storm activity or precipitation.

But it’s been “quite a while” since Maryland has seen a fire involving a large amount of land, Koffel said.

Chris Roberston, state fire supervisor with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, said it’s probably been more than 20 years since the state has seen wildfires cover significant swaths of land. That was a time when Maryland was seeing significant drought.

The state can see marsh fires on the Eastern Shore this time of year, Robertson said, if there’s no snow cover. Those fires can burn a few thousand acres, but most of the time “they’re in pretty sparsely populated areas that don’t hurt a lot.”

In total, Maryland saw roughly 4,483 acres burn in 2023; 3,122 acres in 2022; 1,363 acres in 2021; and 1,422 acres in 2020, according to reports from the Maryland Forest Service.

For context, the the Palisades Fire — just one of multiple raging in Southern California right now — is more than 19,978 acres, according to the Los Angeles Times.