We began this essay with the phrase fire weather, however it does not yet exist in Soph’s mother tongue, British English. The first time Soph recalls searching for such a combination of words was in summer 2022, when London, their then home, exceeded 40 degrees Celsius (105 degrees Fahrenheit) for consecutive days. East of London, a garden compost heap likely spontaneously combusted, sparking the Wennington Wildfire that burned 17 suburban homes, a car repair workshop, numerous cars and blackened agricultural fields. In contrast, though she didn’t have a name for it, Sasha has long known fire weather in the chaparral landscape of Southern California. One of her earliest memories is of walking to preschool while a plume of smoke darkened half the sky.