The US fire season has nearly ended, with the fire count being the fourth lowest on record since 1960. The only years with fewer forest fires were the wet years after the eruption of El Chichon.
National Interagency Fire Center
National Interagency Fire Center
In 1939, there were 185,000 fires, compared to 50,000 in 2012.
I live three miles away from the High Park Fire, which the experts said in June would burn until the snows came in October. The fire was out the next week.
An 1898 fire in Colorado was about 100 times larger than the High Park Fire, so the experts pretend that time began in 1970.
The Deseret News – Google News Archive Search
Compare that (blue rectangle below) to the 2012 fire (red dot below.)
UPDATED: High Park Fire maps and imagery | The Coloradoan | coloradoan.com
Looks like the Gruniad’s brain has expired.
Steven , thank you for your continuing efforts to present the truth and expose the lies and bias we see daily exhibited by the msm . Your perserverence is appreciated by the many who have come to view your blog as an essential site to visit on a daily basis .
So, according to the Grauniad, Colorado was above the flash point of wood this summer?
I thought fires, having been started by lightning or some other ignition source, were driven by wind.
Step change in the early 1980s, why?
Answer is in the second sentence of the post.
I remember when the alarmist idiots were claiming several months ago that the amount of fires was unprecedented, and of course now we don’t hear a peep out of them.
Well! Forth lowest in history is unprecedented and must be caused by AGW What else could it possibly be? 😉
Looking at the discontinuity in the count it seems there must have been some change in methodology or data sets between 82-83.
I wonder what drives the effect
Of the increase in acreage wrecked
Each new burn now looms large
Why is that? Who’s in charge?
Are big fires now what they expect?
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
You are being deliberately misleading on this one. Steven. While the number of fires has diminished over time, the average size has increased significantly. Which you would notice if you bothered plotting the other column from the table you link to. You will get similar increase whether you plot an average fire size or total acreage. The fact that this increase is more likely caused by a century of fire suppression and buildup of fuel in the forest does not make this fact go away. I would expect better from you.
Grass fires. The fire count was the lowest in over 20 years. No one is being misleading.