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US Experiencing Worst Fire Season on Record as Blazes in Washington and Oregon Explode Twelvefold to Over 1 Million Acres
24
August, 2015
Across
the Northwest US — a region known for its damp climate, its
rainforests, and for often cool and wet weather — wildfires have
been exploding. This summer, heat and dryness settled over the region
in a months-long drought and heatwave. By late June, wide areaswere
seeing their worst fire conditions on record —
meaning that heat and drought were generating a never-before-seen
potential for wildfire outbreak.
The
heat settled in, baking Oregon, Washington and Montana with 90 and,
sometimes, 100 degree + heat. Fires sparked and smoldered throughout
June, July, and through late August. But over the past twelve days,
despite amazing preparation and effort on behalf of fire officials,
northwestern wildfires exploded in size by more than tenfold
— erupting
from about 85,000 acres in coverage to over a million acres burning
as of Monday, August 24h.
(An
astronaut aboard the International Space Station photographs
wildfires burning out of control on August 17, 2015. Image source:
NASA and TIME.)
In
a scene that has become all-too-common in a world that’s 1 degree
Celsius above 1880s averages and climbing, firefighters were called
in from as far away as Australia to battle the blaze. Prison inmates,
firefighters from throughout the US and Canada, and National Guard
Soldiers joined with the Australians to form an army to fight the
blazes. Numbering more than 20,000, this force’s valiant efforts
likely saved hundreds of lives and thousands of structures as fire
conditions worsened in Northern California, Oregon, Washington and
Montana.
By
Thursday, three firefighters had tragically lost their lives as
President Obama was calling the situation ‘out of control.’
Through Friday, Saturday and Sunday, acres burned continued to expand
as vast plumes of smoke covered large swaths of the United States.
Particulates born of the western conflagrations by Monday were hazing
skies as far away as Newfoundland.
(Massive
wildfires burning across the western United States sent out a 1,500
mile long plume of smoke on Saturday, August 22. Image
source: LANCE-MODIS.)
Worst
US Fire Season on Record Through Late August
As
the US Northwest fights valiantly to get its massive wildfires under
control, the United States now finds itself in its worst fire season
on record through late August. In Alaska alone more than 5.1 million
acres have burned. Now,
with nearly 7.5 million acres gone up in smoke across the United
States since Spring, we are about 300,000 acres ahead of previous
worst season 2012.
The
US record fire season should not be viewed as an event in isolation.
Nor should it be viewed as normal — new or otherwise. It’s an
upshot of extraordinarily warm waters in the Northeastern Pacific
shoving hot airs northward into regions that typically experience
cool, wet weather. The climate of the Desert Southwest has been
forced into Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and Montana. And
the result is that forests, already weakened by rising atmospheric
nitrogen levels, and not accustomed to such heat and dryness, are at
ever-greater risk of fire. Added dangers and stresses that are the
direct upshot of human-based fossil fuel burning and human-forced
global warming.
Links:
Hat
Tip to Ray Duray
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