Can it get worse than a pandemic, record-breaking heat and a science-denying president?

Yes, it can. All of that plus raging fires over big swathes of California, Oregon and Washington. If you don't know already, I live in southern Oregon. The closest fire to me is about 15 miles (24 km) north. The wind is currently blowing it toward the NW, but that changes, of course. There are so many fires all around that thick smoke is blanketing the entire region, making it highly undesireable to go outside.

Just so I'll be even MORE nervous, my son works the fires as an employee of the US Forest Service. He's not one of those people running up mountains with shovels - that's for the younger, newer guys - thank goodness! He's in charge of "fire cache" operations. Everything necessary to fight fires is strategically stashed at supply warehouses in every National Forest. He does also have to cut fire trails in a 'dozer or drive water tankers to the fire camps. Still, the way these wind driven mega-fires are behaving I do worry.

This is, indeed a catastrophic fire season, and it has only just begun. Here is a current map of fires, west coast is the worst by far, but the entire western US is dry as a bone and also having fire outbreaks. (There is less vegetation to burn in the southwest and the plains states)
I think the yellow dots signify "hot spots" detected by the Dept. of Forestry. I don't know what all of the specific symbols signify, but the purple squares happen to match up with the fire caches in my region of Oregon. Klamath Falls is near the bottom of this map and the state line with California is below that:
Source: www.oregon.gov/odf/fire/pages/firestats.aspx

The map on the website is interactive. Clicking on symbols gives detailed information about the fire, including the acreage involved and other statistics I don't understand. The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, gave a scathing press conference from a smokey forest about climate change and the change-deniers. Worth a watch on Youtube to get an idea of the political leadership in the three coastal states: www.youtube.com/watch

"This a climate damn emergency. This is real."
Gov. Gavin Newsom, California

EDIT: Corrected the governor's name, which is Newsom (no e at the end).