Fire Weather Index in California in September, October, and November since the 1980s. From the research paper.
Researchers have quantified some of the factors that have led to an increase in southern California large wildfires during the autumn months in recent decades.
Here are examples of late season fires that occurred in southern California in 2017 and 2018:
The study defines autumn as September through November.
But their analysis goes much farther back than just three years. Among other things, they found that rising temperatures, declining snowpack, and decreasing precipitation in autumn and spring have acted to extend California’s fire season in the shoulder seasons. They also determined that climate change has already doubled the frequency of extreme fire weather days since the 1980s (see the illustration at the top of the article).
The research also found a long-term trend toward more extreme fire weather conditions occurring in both southern and northern California at the same time.
The study was conducted by Michael Goss, Daniel L. Swain, John T. Abatzoglou, Ali Sarhadi, Crystal Kolden, A. Park Williams, and Noah S. Diffenbaugh.
Today there is a bit of good news for anyone worried about how firefighters will control wildfires during the current coronavirus pandemic. The wildfire potential outlook issued by the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) on March 1 predicted that the coastal areas of Central and Southern California would have above average conditions for April, but that changed in a new outlook released today. As you can see in the map above there are no areas in the United States with forecasts for above normal wildfire activity in April.
That is expected to change in May with enhanced potential in southeast Arizona and south Florida. Then in June portions of northeast California and the southern areas of Nevada and Utah will be added to the list. In July firefighters could be busy in Washington, Oregon, and northern California.
The outlook comes from the Predictive Services section at NIFC and represents the cumulative forecasts of the ten Geographic Area Predictive Services Units and the National Predictive Services Unit.
The temperature outlook from the National Weather Service for April through June predicts higher than average temperatures in the west, southwest, southeast, and east. Precipitation for the period should be normal, except drier in the northwest and more rain than normal in the east one-third of the country.
Below:
An excerpt from the NIFC narrative report for the next several months;
More of NIFC’s monthly graphical outlooks;
NOAA’s three-month temperature and precipitation forecasts;
Drought Monitor;
Keetch-Byram Drought Index.
“Mountain snowpack remained near to above average on the Continental Divide, along the Canadian Border, and across the Alaskan Interior. It was below average to well below average across the High Sierra, Southern Cascades, Great Basin, Sawtooth Mountains, Kenai Peninsula, and the Chugach Mountains. Snowpack melting rates will need to be monitored closely in these areas. Drought development and slight intensification was observed across California, Oregon, portions of the Great Basin, South Texas and Florida.
“Wildfire activity in April should continue to be light and focused in four areas. South Florida has been extremely dry. Fuels are receptive. Pregreenup activity may occur during warm and breezy periods along the Rocky Mountain Front as fronts pass. New Mexico begins to enter its season late in the month. In Alaska, hold over activity from the previous season can reemerge as the snowpack melts off. The potential for each in April 2020 is not expected exceed what is observed typically, except possibly in Florida.
“May is a transitional period. Fuels in southwestern areas dry, and fuels across northwestern areas enter peak greenup. The Southwest, California and Alaska begin to more fully enter fire season while other regions remain out of season. A normal transition into the Western fire season is expected. Areas of concern will be the middle elevations across much of California. In June and July, the West and Alaska enter their peak seasons. Activity across Oregon and Central through Northern California may be above normal. While overall Normal significant large fire potential is expected across most of the Southwest, some portions of the Great Basin and western portions of the Northern Rockies may experience elevated potential and activity as well. The Southwest and Alaska should transition out of fire season in July.”
Temperature and precipitation outlook for June through August, 2020.Drought Monitor
One of them works at Great Smoky Mountains National Park which is in Tennessee & North Carolina
File photo of a portion of the Chimney Tops 2 Fire at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Photo by Bill Gabbert, June 7, 2017. During the week of March 22, 2020 one employee at the park tested positive for the coronavirus.
At least seven employees of the National Park Service have tested positive for the coronavirus, or COVID-19. During the week of March 22 the superintendent of Great Smoky Mountains National Park said an employee there tested positive for the virus. The park on the Tennessee/North Carolina border was closed to the public on March 24, but many NPS sites remain open but have closed their visitor centers.
From the Washington Post, March 31, 2020:
In response to questions from The Washington Post, the agency said Tuesday that as of Monday, seven Park Service employees have tested positive for covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. That figure, which had not been previously reported, doesn’t include workers in the park who are not federal employees. “The NPS is working with our contractors and concessionaires to track reported cases of their employees as well,” Stephanie Roulett, a spokeswoman, wrote in an email.
The Park Service, a division of the Interior Department, will not identify where the affected employees are to protect their identities The infections came to light in a Wednesday teleconference when Park Service Director David Vela told workers, “this week, sadly, we received word of the first confirmed cases of NPS employees with covid-19.”
At Grand Canyon National Park, which drew large crowds over the weekend and remains open, park employees were informed Monday that a resident in the park’s housing complex on the South Rim has tested positive.
Roulett said no Park Service employee at Grand Canyon has been diagnosed with covid-19. Officials in Coconino County, which includes the park, have asked it to be shut down.
Our take:
These seven NPS employees could be only the tip of the iceburg since such a small segment of the population in the United States has been tested for the virus. The essential service of fighting wildland fires cannot be carried out safely without making it mandatory for all firefighters to be tested, and on a regular basis. Symptoms of the disease only show up several days after the initial infection, but during that time the virus can spread to others. Without testing, fires may have to be left to burn, or just fought with air tankers and helicopters. Dispatching untested crews and incident management teams of firefighters when it is almost certain that some are shedding the virus, is dangerous and unethical.
In 2017 over 8,000 personnel were assigned to the Thomas Fire in southern California near Ventura.
It’s clear to most citizens of California that wildfires have become more intense over the last few years. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara and the Nature Conservancy have compiled a new dataset of damage caused by wildfires in California in areas protected by the state of California. (Some of the data does not include fires on lands protected by federal agencies, such as the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and the BLM). The report illustrates how the recent set of severe fires fits into a broader trend of increasing burn area and damage over the past 40 years.
The report was written by: Hanna Buechi (Environmental Market Solutions Lab, UCSB), Dick Cameron (The Nature Conservancy), Sarah Heard (The Nature Conservancy), Andrew J. Plantinga (Environmental Market Solutions Lab, UCSB), and Paige Weber (Environmental Market Solutions Lab, UCSB).
The researchers studied data on fire perimeters and estimates of damages for each fire and used the information to calculate trends involving the number and timing of fires throughout the state by time of year. They also calculated the total area burned and specifically identified the amount of wildland urban-interface burned. These are areas where houses intermingle with wildland vegetation, and are of particular concern to those studying wildfire.
Andrew Plantinga. UCSB photo.
“The main finding is that the recent severe fires in California — including the Thomas fire in 2017 and the Camp fire in 2018 — are part of a trend in California over the past four decades,” said Andrew Plantinga, an economics professor at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. “The trend is toward more wildfires that burn larger areas and cause more damage.”
The number of acres burned per year has not only been increasing, the report found, it is also accelerating. And this increase isn’t only during the season’s peak, from June through October. The state is also seeing a longer fire season, with more acres burned in late fall than in the past. And while greater burn areas don’t automatically translate to greater damages, the researchers found that these, too, have been on the rise.
“I expected the recent severe fires to be outliers, and they are,” said Plantinga, “but it’s also clear that they represent part of a trend toward larger and more damaging fires.”
The report is part of a larger effort to estimate the costs associated with a business-as-usual approach to development in California, when considering the potential impacts of climate change. The team had previously found that interventions on natural and working lands — like forests, farms and rangelands — can contribute 2.5 times the emissions reductions by 2050 as residential and commercial sectors combined.
What’s more, for every dollar spent on implementing land-use strategies, close to fifty cents would be recouped in economic benefits. And that’s without accounting for other positive impacts, the previous report states.
Civilian and Firefighter Deaths on wildfires in California that occurred on State Responsibility Area lands, 1979 – 2017.Estimated Value of Structure Losses (in 2018 dollars) for State Responsibility Area Fires, by Year, 1979 – 2018.
Map of Structure Losses and Fire Perimeters for State Responsibility Area Fires, 1979 – 2018.
Screenshot of firefighters working on a wildfire near Xinhua in China. From a video produced by CTGN, an organization supported by the government of China.
A wildfire in southwest China’s Sichuan province killed 19 people on Monday, including 18 firefighters according to state news agency Xinhua. It started on a farm and pushed by strong winds spread into mountains burning 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) by Monday night. It now directly threatens major facilities in downtown Xichang, including a petroleum storage facility and four schools.
About 690,000 people live in the city, which is about 210 miles southwest of provincial capital Chengdu.
Map of the fire near Xichang in China. From the Twitter account of The Paper (Pengpai News 澎湃新闻)
In the tweet below, firefighters appear to be in a precarious location:
Here is the computer-generated translation:
A large fire has been ravaging since yesterday the region of #Xichang, in the south center of the . #China 18 firefighters have already lost their lives trying to control the fire #XichangFirehttps://t.co/n6dgrB05Pr
At least eight interagency Incident Management Teams have been deployed to work on issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic. These are the teams that usually are assigned on wildfires, hurricanes, and other natural disasters, but can adapt to manage many different kinds of planned or unplanned incidents, organized under the Incident Command System.
As we reported earlier, three Area Command Teams were given assignments on March 17 to develop protocols and wildfire response plans for maintaining dispatching, initial attack, and extended attack capability. The plan was for the personnel to work remotely, rather than assemble in one location. The teams will be working on plans for the following geographic areas:
AC Team 1, Tim Sexton: Southern, Great Basin, & Northern Rockies.
AC Team 2, Joe Stutler: Rocky Mountains, Northwest, & Alaska.
AC Team 3, Scott Jalbert: Southwest, and both Northern and Southern California.
Two National Incident Management Organization (NIMO) teams have also received assignments:
Portland NIMO, Bea Day, has been assigned to Forest Service Region 5 (California) COVID-19 Support.
Phoenix NIMO, Bob Houseman, has been assigned to COVID-19 support at Forest Service headquarters in Washington D.C.
Two IMTs were activated in the Northwest Geographic Area:
Type 1 NW Team 2, Rob Allen, has been assigned to Washington State Emergency Operations Center, providing complexity analysis, risk assessments and short/long-term planning guidance.
Type 2 NW Team 13 , Brian Gales, has been assigned to the Spokane Regional Health District, Washington, assisting with strategic planning and building capacity.
There are reports that other teams have been assigned in Oregon from the State Fire Marshal’s office and the Department of Forestry.
