Fire experts: Western fires are ‘unreal’

Wildfire experts and meteorologists are aghast at the explosion in Western wildfires.

Massive, rapidly moving fires have come alive in California, Washington, and Oregon as potent winds fanned flames over a region parched by heat and dryness. The big picture out West, particularly in California, is clear: A warming climate boosts the odds of large-scale wildfires, because dried-out vegetation is significantly more susceptible to fire. 

“We’re seeing the consequences of a background state that is more conducive to these extreme fires,”  Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told Mashable as these recent fires erupted.

2020 is not a fluke. It’s part of a trend, and trends define climate change. “This year is embedded within a long-term uphill climb toward warmer, drier, and smokier climates,” John Abatzoglou, a fire scientist at the University of California, Merced, told Mashable as some of the largest fires in California history burned in late August.

Wildfires are not inherently bad. Rather, they’re critical to naturally maintain healthy forests that aren’t overcrowded and prone to infernos. (That’s why California and the U.S. Forest Service recently agreed to thin 1 million acres of mismanaged California forest annually, using well-managed fire treatments.) But modern fires, often human-caused via the likes of downed power lines or accidents, are burning in a continually heating, increasingly dangerous fire regime. That makes for a smokier, more perilous Western future.

Experts in the fire realm are reacting online to the range, scale, and intensity of the current blazes, particularly satellite imagery of the Western fires from Sept. 8. and Sept. 9.

1. Michael Gollner, a fire scientist at the University of California, Berkely, labeled the events as “Unreal fire behavior.”

“Widespread across the west coast after an unprecedented wildfire season,” Gollner continued. “I want to say we’ve never seen fires of this magnitude, but the Great Fire of 1910 and Peshtigo 1871 probably surpassed this, but not so widespread as now.”

2. Amanda Monthei, a former wildland firefighter and host of the Living With Fire Podcast, described the Sept. 8 events as one of the most extreme fire days in “a VERY long time.”

“I think a lot of people in the fire world would agree that this is probably the gnarliest day that the US has seen in a VERY long time in terms of fire behavior and the sheer amount of communities/infrastructure destroyed and threatened,” Monthei tweeted.

3. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, tweeted that he could no longer keep track of the amassing Western blazes.

“The wildfire situation in California and Oregon has now escalated to the point that I can no longer keep track of the countless massive, fast-moving, and potentially very dangerous fires,” Swain wrote. “The geographic scale and intensity of what is transpiring is truly jarring.” 

4. Michael Wara, who directs the Climate and Energy Policy Program at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, awoke Wednesday to smoky, dark, dystopian skies — like millions of other Californians.

“Hard to communicate to colleagues not on the west coast how frightening what is happening here is,” wrote Wara. “The first time in my life that as I wake my kids up for ‘school’ I have to warn them and tell them that we are safe. Convince them is more like it.”

5. Crystal A. Kolden, a fire scientist at the University of California, Merced, tweeted about a firestorm that decimated a small town in eastern Washington. 

“It’s not just CA on [fire],” she wrote. “A small town in eastern WA burned up today in a wildfire moving rapidly through wheat fields. Major fires throughout NW due to heat & wind. Power shut offs in OR and CA to prevent new fires. #notnormal #climatechange” 

6. Meteorologist Nick Nauslar tweeted that the fires are unprecedented, at least in the modern era.

“This event is unprecedented,” wrote Nauslar. “I’ve talked to people who have been in fire for 20, 30, 40+ years and they’ve never seen anything like this before. Not this many large, rapidly spreading wildfires across such a broad region.”

7. Steve Bowen, a meteorologist for the risk analyst company Aon, tweeted about the abnormality of the fires in Oregon and Washington.

“To have this volume of large fire activity burning concurrently from Oregon to California is not normal,” wrote Bowen. “The depth and expanse of the smoke plume is remarkable.”

8. Jeff Forgeron, a meteorologist for Fox12Oregon, called the fires “dire.”

“Early afternoon view of wildfires scorching Oregon & southwest Washington, w/ gusty east wind driving smoke & fire lines westward,” wrote Forgeron. “Entire cities are dark along the coast & Willamette Valley. Truly a dire situation unfolding.”

9. Lastly, climate scientist Robert Rohde, a lead scientist at the environmental research group Berkeley Earth, showed how California just experienced its hottest August on record. It was 5 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average.

Hotter climes = drier vegetation = more fire.

“Climate change is making the fires worse,” wrote Rohde.