By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times

A wildfire season that began with dire warnings that dry conditions had set the stage for a year of flames across California and the West turned out to be one of the nation’s quietest in the past decade.

Although 2013 was marked by two high-profile blazes, one in California and the other in Arizona, nationally the total wildfire acreage of 4.15 million is far below the 10-year average of 6.8 million acres.

In California, the number of wildfires was high, but the amount of land that burned was slightly less than the 10-year average, according to state and federal figures. As always, weather was the deciding factor.

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