Discussion for article #238014
Welcome to Climate Change World.
Canât prove it but itâs a good bet.
Itâs fire âseasonâ, like tornado and hurricane âseasonâ or baseball.
Big fires happen and have as long as I can remember, whether they are worse now or not would take some serious data searching I think to prove. We lost 250 homes in upper San Bernardino, CA in '81 I think due to being the hot and dry season, and 70 mph Santa Ana winds that happen every year but were worse and all came together that year.
We watched fires dancing in the mountains at night from our porch in the valley for entertainment during the summer every year for over 30 years. It was the norm.
It has been the norm in California since time immemorial, but in Washington state where I live, the number, severity, and devastation of fires has steadily increased. Last year whole towns were eradicated and the year before, hundreds of buildings and homes and thousands of livestock were lost. Last year I was evacuated from my home for six weeks due to the proximity of fires, topping the three week evacuation from the year before. I live in the woods, and I understand the current fire ecology is a product of many factors, but climate leads the list; this year the watershed I live in had 7% of its average snow pack, high temperatures normally associated with mid- to late-summer arrived weeks ago, and thunderstorms have increased in frequency and intensity.
1 Like
Yes, but droughts of this magnitude do not happen regularly. There shouldnât be a âdrought seasonâ, but now we have a years-long one for the West and Pacific Northwest. http://www.weather.com/news/news/snowpack-cascades-west-northwest
Yes. Luckily there are scientists tasked with doing that data searching.
Notice how the graph isnât very high for '81, and yet I was there, the fires were huge and fueled by some of the strongest Santa Ana winds that I had ever been in. You couldnât walk into them.
I know the climate is getting much drier there but I also know that there are a lot more people there and many fires are human caused.
That fact has to factor in somehow or some way.