Fewest US Forest Fires In Three Decades

Obama science czar John Holdren says US forest fires doubled this decade, when in fact they did the exact opposite. They have declined by more than 50%

This summer has been very wet in most of the west, and there are no large fires burning outside of California, Oregon and Idaho.  The number of fires is the lowest in three decades, and has plummeted since 2006. (This number will increase a little over the next two months.)

ScreenHunter_2375 Aug. 28 07.28

National Interagency Fire Center

Except for California and Oregon, this has been a wet summer.

90dPNormUS

http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/90dPNormUS.png

Burn acreage this year has been less than half of the decadal average, and is the lowest in a decade.

ScreenHunter_2373 Aug. 28 07.12 National Interagency Fire Center

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19 Responses to Fewest US Forest Fires In Three Decades

  1. philjourdan says:

    Makes sense when you think about it. While the mild (cool) summer has been a boon for city dwellers, there is no need to ‘escape’ the heat by visiting the forest and starting a fire.

    I suspect when all is said and done, the Forest Service is going to moan about the drop in visitors.

    • Actually, with the exception of Southern California,typically, most of the burned acreage in the national forests is the result of lightning caused fires. While almost 90% of fires are human-caused (before it became politically incorrect we used to say “man-caused”),the greater percentage of these human related ignitions are in the eastern US where fires sizes are considerably smaller than in the west.

  2. mjc says:

    The problem is, and pretty much always has been, not how many fires there are or how much area is burned, but WHERE the fires are located.

    A thousand acres in WV can burn and it barely makes the local news, yet one of the same size in CA is headline news and a sign of the impending climate apocalypse. (Granted CA fires frequently spread well beyond 1000 acres…)

    • WVa ( as well as other eastern states) have relatively very few 1000 acre fires.

      • mjc says:

        Yes, but how many eastern other eastern states are even capable of having a 1000 acre fire (hint…two, maybe three…and 2 of them are New England states) and not wiping out at least one town?

        WV has over 1 million acres of National Forest land AND is nearly 78% forested. So a 1000 acre fire is very possible, in fact last year saw a 1600 acre fire. The worst year for WV fires was 1952 with over 630,000 acres burned…and an ‘average’ year sees about 5000 acres burned, most of them are well under 100 acres in size but every so often there’s a 1000+.

        • In 1825, New Brunswick and Maine had a 3 million acre fire.

        • mjc says:

          Maine and New Hampshire are the other two eastern states capable of large fires due to the amount of forested land they contain…Virginia is 4th. Georgia may be capable, with all the pine plantations, but that is usually so well managed fire is low on the list of dangers…storm damage affects a lot more acreage.

        • philjourdan says:

          Actually, getting out of NE, you will find most of the eastern states can easily have fires that size without affecting a town. Now if you are talking 100k acres that is a different story. 1000 acres is not that much – less than 2 sq miles.

  3. weather, not climate…smh
    just keep being willfully ignorant and let your grandkids deal with it.

    • Gail Combs says:

      I am planning to make sure my kids descendants are well prepared for the coming glaciation by breeding my current doe kids to cashmere bucks.

      The Holocene interglacial is now 11,717 years old….. That’s two centuries or so beyond half the present precession cycle (or 23,000/2=11,500). Only one interglacial , MIS-11, since the Mid-Pleistocene Transition has lasted longer than about half a precession cycle.

      Any hope that the Holocene would go long was shot down by Lisiecki and Raymo in 2005 in their rebuttal of Loutre and Berger, 2003.

      A History of Solar Activity over Millennia

      several “predictions” of the general decline of the coming solar activity have been made recently (Solanki et al., 2004; Abreu et al., 2008; Lockwood et al., 2011), however, these are not really true predictions but rather the acknowledge of the fact that the Modern Grand maximum (Usoskin et al., 2003c; Solanki et al., 2004) must cease. Similar caution can be made about predictions of a Grand minimum (e.g., Lockwood et al., 2011; Miyahara et al., 2010) – a grand minimum should appear soon or later, but presently we are hardly able to predict its occurrence. ….

      Since that paper was written solar cycle 24 has made it rather clear the earth is indeed looking at a Grand Minimum.

      To top it off increased volcanic activity has been linked to low solar activity.

      Today, the Space and Science Research Center (SSRC) releases its preliminary findings of the incidence of major geophysical events including earthquakes and volcanoes tied to the Sun’s activity and climate change.

      The SSRC, the leading independent research center in the United States on the subject of the next climate change to a period of extended cold weather, has concluded a detailed comparison of solar activity with major earthquakes and volcanic activity. It has found a significant correlation exists between periods of reduced activity by the Sun, previously linked to cold climates are now identified with the most disastrous earthquakes in the United States and major volcanic eruptions around the globe.

      The research for this preliminary study was completed in September 2009….
      link

    • catweazle666 says:

      You’re funny!

  4. Pathway says:

    Yes, our grandchildren will be dealing with $17,000,000,000,000 in debt and $100,000,000,000,000 in unfunded liabilities.

    • there is no substitute for victory says:

      For everyone’s benefit me thinks that you need to oil your time machine. By the time your Grandchildren get around to dealing with the debt they will have children of their own and the debt will likely be $17,000,000,000,000,000 (Quadrillion) and the unfunded liabilities that the Rent Seekers have amassed may will be north of $1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (Quintillion)

    • philjourdan says:

      And a health care system that was broken so they could see what was in it.

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