Many of the common assumptions about wildfire (that it increases soil water repellency, reduces water use by plants, reduces snowpack, etc.) are only true under certain circumstances. We present examples of post-fire soils and hydrology observations which challenge expected behavior. The focus is on over 10 years of field data collected in Illilouette Creek Basin, within California’s Yosemite National Park (USA). This watershed has served as a natural experiment for the past half-century, where lightning-ignited wildfires have mostly been allowed to burn unsuppressed for the purposes of restoring a sustainable ecosystem and fire regime. The frequent mixed severity fires in this watershed provide a valuable contrast to the large high severity megafires that are more commonly studied.