Fire Conditions In SW "Ideal" Thanks To Drought - 3.2 MA Burned To Date

[hatrack]

SEDONA, Ariz. — A prolonged drought has created ideal wildfire conditions across much of the West and Southwest this summer, alarming forestry officials, who already are dealing with an unusually high number of fires.

Nationwide as of Saturday, officials have reported 54,686 fires charring more than 3.2 million acres this year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. Both figures are the highest in at least a decade for the same period. The 10-year average for this date is 39,240 fires burning about 1 million acres. So far, none of the fires has spun out of control, but scientists and forestry officials warned that exceptionally light rains and low humidity in many states have left dry, dead branches and grasses that could ignite like a tinderbox.

"Basically, you have had low precipitation since the late 1990s, and now, a winter in which we got close to no precipitation" in the Southwest, said Chuck Maxwell, a meteorologist with the Department of the Interior who months ago predicted a severe fire season. "The fuel moisture levels are very low. The humidity is very low. There are lots of places now that are as dry as we have ever seen them."

One such place is the scenic red-rock country around the resort town of Sedona, about 90 miles north of Phoenix. Firefighters spent most of last week battling a blaze that threatened to spill down the candy-colored walls of Oak Creek Canyon, a bucolic area just north of town. About 30 businesses and 430 residences — from modest trailers to resorts and million-dollar estates — were evacuated last Sunday. The fire, which had burned more than 4,000 acres, was 20% contained as of Saturday. The area sweltered in 100-degree heat all week, which made it tougher to stop the fire. Flames crept down the west wall of the canyon, bristling with dried-out willows, cottonwood and pine. Firefighters ignited backfires along the road that winds through the canyon bottom to keep the fire from jumping across Oak Creek and spreading toward Sedona.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wildfires25jun25,1,1973345.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&track=crosspromo

[Redstone]

1. Essentially, God did not want so many people to live there.

Redstone

[phantom power]

2. Interesting. To date there have been no "megafires" out here.

All that acreage seems to have been lost to relatively small fires. I was expecting at least a few super-sized fires of the kind that make the national news for a few weeks. Of course, the summer isn't over yet.

[NNadir]

3. Way back when I was a young hippie, I hiked quite a bit in Red Rock

Canyon. It was the mid-1970's.

This is probably an especially unappealing thought given my current appearance, but I remember all of us hippies getting nekkid in the River and doing our hippie nekkid bit. I guess you can't do that any more.

Probably in the burned over roads are visible from the roads now, and whatever mansions have been built since last I was there.

Memory lane...

[phantom power]

4. These days you have to watch the fecal coloform counts.

I live in the environmental dystopia predicted in the science fiction I read as a kid. Still fun to swim in though. Last time I jumped in, the water temp was 48F. It took days for my pores to reopen.

[NNadir]

5. Man, that's depressing.

I'll bet the place is as crowded as hell too.

It wasn't then.

[phantom power]

6. Yeah, Sedona/OCC/RRC is so crowded that we generally avoid it.

I can only imagine what the southwest would have been like before the population explosion. Eden, I suppose.