The sports movie, like any genre, can easily fall victim to overly familiar story beats.

Forecasters say the only break much of America can hope for anytime soon from eye-watering dangerous smoke from fire-struck Canada is brief bouts of shirt-soaking sweltering heat and humidity from a southern heat wave that has already proven deadly.

(AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)SAN FRANCISCO – The staggering scale of California's wildfires reached another milestone Monday: A single fire surpassed 1 million acres. Gavin Newsom said the amount of land scorched by the August Complex is larger than all of the recorded fires in California between 1932 and 1999. Since the beginning of the year, more than 8,200 California wildfires have scorched “well over 4 million acres” or 6,250 square miles, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said Sunday in a statement. Numerous studies have linked bigger wildfires in America to climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas. Scientists say climate change has made California much drier, meaning trees and other plants are more flammable.

“And that number will grow.”So far, in this year’s historic fire season, more than 8,200 California wildfires have killed 31 people and scorched “well over 4 million acres in California” or 6,250 square miles, Cal Fire said Sunday in a statement. The astonishing figure is more than double the 2018 record of 1.67 million burned acres (2,609 square miles) in California. Numerous studies have linked bigger wildfires in America to climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas. Virtually all the damage has occurred since mid-August, when five of the six largest fires in state history erupted. Flannigan, the fire scientist, estimates the area of land burned from wildfires in California has increased fivefold since the 1970s.

(Bethany Bradley/University of Massachusetts via AP)WASHINGTON, DC For much of the United States, invasive grass species are making wildfires more frequent, especially in fire-prone California, a new study finds. Twelve non-native species act as "little arsonist grasses," said study co-author Bethany Bradley, a University of Massachusetts professor of environmental conservation. This study doesn't look at invasive grasses in the areas that are burning in California, but invasive grasses are contributing to the fires there." One region they should have mentioned is Hawaii where wildfires are increasing in large part due to invasive grasses." But the study did not find a link between invasive grasses and the size of the fires.