Hi Friends,
I want to preface this newsletter with a fun fact: wildfires aren’t bad, and they aren’t unusual. They are a natural occurrence. Suppressing fires for the last 115 years has had dire effects on the health of our forests, grasslands, and water supplies, and has ironically increased the occurrence of what are now called “megafires.”
There’s no one answer to the issue of wildfires, but one important answer is that we need fire. We need burning. We need to allow for some smoke and some inconvenience. In order to prevent catastrophe.
Okay, that’s all.
Today’s situation report contains 4 new large fires and 10 uncontained large fires. These forty fires are inevitably being managed under the “full suppression” strategy, which means that they are not being allowed to burn. In the Southwest area there are 10 uncontained large fires. Unfortunately the monsoons haven’t come yet and there are fire watches in effect as dry thunderstorms move through the area, potentially starting new fires with lightning. Phoenix recently hit 115 degrees F. There are several fires burning near Flagstaff (luckily Flagstaff has a stellar WUI code that other cities should definitely adopt). Southern Colorado is experiencing heavy smoke from New Mexico and Arizona.
The Rocky Mountain area has 7 uncontained large fires (under full suppression). According to Wyoming Public Media, wildfires are burning twice as much of the Rockies as the last 2,000 years, as measured by lake sediment. Much of this is being correlated with climate change, specifically the increase in temperatures and decrease in snowpack. Because of the subalpine nature of some of these forests, prescribed burning supposedly isn’t as “easy” as it is in other areas.
The Great Basin area currently has 8 uncontained wildfires. According to a report, the Great Basin area is especially dry. Much of the great basin has been subjected to overgrazing for hundreds of years, since colonization from the Europeans, resulting in a slow erasure of resplendent native grasses, erosion, and more flammable non-native grasses like cheatgrass, which can carry fire faster and whose roots survive through winter, causing it to grow unchecked and creating more fuel to carry fire. These non-native grasses have also harmed Pinyon Juniper landscapes, creating higher heat and volatility which kills native tree species and increases fuel load.
So. Cal is pretty calm, for now, as are the other regions. The Northwest area has two large fires burning, Alaska has one, and the Northern Rockies have 8, with a fire near Red Lodge being the most threatening.
Overall, it actually looks like a pretty normal fire season so far. Stay safe out there.