2012 – Fewest Forest Fires In Decades

6 Responses to 2012 – Fewest Forest Fires In Decades

1. Dave N says:

   October 26, 2012 at 4:48 am

   Does Jimmy Carter take credit?

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   • Dave N says:

     October 26, 2012 at 4:49 am

     Whoops.. I meant Reagan..

     I need more sleep

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2. aviary99Richard says:

   October 26, 2012 at 5:27 am

   The 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s were pretty ugly it seems. Must have been hell to live with. I left North America in ’82 so it must have been my fault. Sorry.

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3. Will Nitschke says:

   October 26, 2012 at 8:05 am

   This is what Climate Scientists describe as Extreme[ly nice] weather.

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4. Otter says:

   October 26, 2012 at 8:15 am

   Your timing is perfect, Steve, I am just now writing an article about extreme weather (not!), and I have someone yelling at me about wildfires creating CO2 😛

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5. Tootsie Hinkle says:

   January 19, 2013 at 6:48 pm

   I could not find the same data you posted. I perused the nifc fire statistic info site and found multiple reports through 2011, but nowhere were there stats on 2012 unless you went to the individual state numbers and plugged those totals into a homemade chart. That should show a total fire count of 67,315. The number of fires is irrelevant since so many of the variables are out of our control (the # of idiots letting a chain drag behind their vehicles, the # of idiots who toss cigarettes out their window, the # of power lines that go down due to high wind in the summer, the number of dry lightning storms like the freak spate of storms California suffered in the summer of 2006) But the more interesting number is the number of acres burned…in 2012, it was 9,211,281 acres. That’s a very large number. As fire science advances, the number of acres burned should go down, but wildland firefighters are finding the fuel load much drier and explosive. (THAT kind of information is found in reports, not charts)(although they probably do keep records on the moisture content of the fuels in individual fires)
   There are too many factors involved in fire stats to draw conclusions, so posting a single chart is kinda pointless.
   And your title (2012-Fewest Forest Fires in Decades) is not true.
   With the NIFC reporting 67,315 wildland fires, three years in this decade alone had fewer forest fires! (2003, 2004, 2005)
   The fact that is so stunning is not the number of fires, but the number of acres burned…if you compare this decade (2002-2012) to the previous (1992-2002) the increase in acres burned is frightening (acres burned stats are found at the first link I provided)(and acres burned for 2012 was 9,211,281acres) In the past couple of decades, we went from roughly three-and-a-half million acres burned per year to roughly SEVEN-and-a-half million acres burned.
   If you had confidence in your arguments, you would not feel the need to fudge facts.
   http://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html
   http://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_YTD2012.html

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