Southern California Hot Spot Hits 812 Degrees, Baffles Experts

Summary

August 6, 2008: In Ventura Coutry, just north of Los Angeles, California, a mysterious "hot spot" appeared that caused the ground to reach a temperature of over 800 degrees Fahrenheit on August 1st, 2008. The exact cause is unknown, though some geologists suspect that natural gases might have caused a fire deep underground, which in turn caused the high surface temperature.

Source

Bibliography

1. Original article

2. Arcana Wiki Map entry

Game and Story Use

• It might have been caused by some large entity of fire living below California which is slowly moving towards the surface.
  • Dragon, The Devil, Salamander, Fire Giant, Eldritch Abomination, Extremophile: take your pick.
• In a fantasy campaign with a stereotypical "Underdark", this might be a local temperature hazard that doesn't have anything to do with streams of lava.
• After the End, if the collapse of civilization came because of climate change/global warming/supervolcano/demonic invasion, or some other temperature-related disaster, there could be such hot spots scattered throughout the wasteland. They might move or develop rapidly, possibly with some sort of warning sound like the fireswamp in The Princess Bride.