The hills around Reno Nevada are currently on fire. The worst fire season in American history has been ravaging the state of Texas now for over a year. The Governor of Texas Rick Perry declared a State of Disaster starting on December 21, 2010 and renewed the proclamation every month. Below is a map of where Texas is burning.
Texas Fires
The La Nina weather system, which started in November 2010 is blamed. This same La Nina is predicted this year as I have previously written about. It brings us colder wetter winters to the Pacific Northwest but the weather troughs over the Pacific Northwest bring strong winds over the plains. With Texas suffering from an exception drought providing fuel to burn, conditions are ideal for fires and devastation.
Texas drought
These Texas fires are similar to the fires that struck Kelowna previously and are right now burning in the Reno area where a State of Emergency has also been declared. All these monstrous fires involved high winds and high fuel loads, these fires are extremely difficult and dangerous to manage. In Reno over 9000 residents have been evacuated and over 20 homes have burned.
Caughlin Fire Near Reno
Since November 2010 the state of Texas has had 27,976 fires. These fires have burned almost 4 million acres. Almost 3000 homes have been lost and 2700 other structures. Of all the fires in the United States this accounted for over 47% over the acreage that was burned. Over 43 States have sent firefighters to help battle these blazes and they still are not under control.
I certainly can not recall so many mega-fires around the world and am quite certain global warming has a role. We now do specific training foe wildland firefighting. It is a more common incident now, and needs to be approached differently than a structure fire. These fires can move so fast that they can not be outrun, and can come around from behind trapping crews.
Wildland Firefighters
Recent examples of mega-fires include the 2009 Black Saturday conflagration in Australia which killed 173 people and incinerated many towns, and record-setting wildfires in Russia last year, where 62 people were killed and around 2.3 million hectares burned as a result of over 32 000 fires. The recent wild-fires in Australia, Botswana, Brazil, Indonesia, Israel, Greece, Russia, and the United States all have been large record setting fires. There certainly seems to be a trend here.
Black Saturday Fire Australia
Even though climatic conditions may be exacerbating the growing number of mega-fires round the world, these fires may also themselves be a contributing factor to global warming. A project named The World Fire Web, is using satellite images to map and monitor the extent of fires across two thirds of the Earth. Each participating country is responsible for monitoring a particular area and the results will be shared over the Internet to produce daily global fire maps.
California Wildfires From Satellite
Unfortunately I think that these world mega-fires are becoming a more common news story, and will be here to stay.
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Fires in Greece From Satellite
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