The Florida Forest Service is predicting a difficult wildfire season if dry conditions persist.Those conditions have created four wildfires in Putnam County that have burned about 900 acres, according to figures provided by the state. In addition, statewide, the dry conditions and the lack of tropical systems last year have helped cause 986 wildfires that [...]
Signal: wildfires
Hurricane force winds, dry conditions drive wildfire in Reno
Firefighters worked early Friday to hold the line on a fast-moving brush fire that tore through the Reno area, destroying more than 20 homes and forcing thousands of residents to flee. The raging wildfire was pushed by high winds Thursday and raced across a tinder-dry landscape south of Reno, destroying homes and other buildings as [...]
Texas has hottest June-August on record in the U.S.
Texas just finished the hottest June through August on record in the U.S., the National Weather Service said Thursday. Weather service meteorologist Victor Murphy told The Associated Press that Texas’ 86.8 average beat out Oklahoma’s 85.2 degrees in 1934. That Dust Bowl year is now third on the list for the three-month span, behind No. [...]
Record drought drying out Texas, fueling record wildfires
March 2011 was the driest on record for the state of Texas. Parts of west Texas received no measurable rainfall during the month and less than an inch of precipitation over the past six months. The whole state settled into drought, with extreme to exceptional drought claiming many areas. March also brought exceptionally warm temperatures, [...]
April wildfires worst on record in the U.S.
According to the Interagency Fire Center, wildfires in 2011 have already burned nearly 2.3 million acres in the U.S. This is the greatest acreage on record so early in the year, and is more area than burned all of last year. The largest U.S. acreage to burn since 1960 was the 9.9 million acres that [...]
NASA: Unusually high temperatures driving Texas fires
So far in 2011, more than 1.4 million acres have burned in Texas. Some 800 fires have occurred throughout the state, burning 401 structures and costing two firefighters their lives. Why is fire activity so extreme in Texas this year? This image, made with data collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s [...]
Climate change fueling Texas fires
More than 1 million acres of Texas plains and forests has gone up in smoke this month as hundreds of fires blazed through the Lone Star State. Gusting winds, statewide drought and low humidity have created tinderbox conditions that state and federal firefighters are still struggling to contain. Lacking a forecast of steady downpours to [...]
Fires burn 1.5 million acres in Texas, fueled by record dry conditions
Since April 6, more than a million acres have burned throughout the state of the Texas, says the Texas Forest Service. Wind whips both smoke and dust southeast across the state. The image illustrates one of the primary reasons fire danger is extremely high in Texas: strong winds. Warm temperatures, dry vegetation for fuel, and [...]
Doubling of Alaskan fires now fueling global warming feedback loop
As the ice melts, fire is taking over in the north. Wildfires in the Alaskan interior have increased in number and intensity over the last 10 years, according to research led by Merritt Turetsky at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. The increasing number and intensity of fires in the northern boreal forest, peatlands [...]
Drought-dry forests burn in Israel’s largest wildfire in history
The largest forest fire in Israel’s history burned outside of Haifa on December 3, 2010. Having started the previous day, the fire quickly grew out of control as strong winds blew through the drought-dried forest. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of the fire on December 3 at [...]
