3 Megafires For OK In 3 Years; Global Warming, Fire Suppression & Red Cedars All Lending A Hand

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Oklahoma’s third megafire in three years—the Rhea Fire, which has torched some 242,000 acres in less than a week—may grow even worse on Tuesday, as horrific fire weather conditions sweep in from New Mexico and west Texas. Relative humidity may drop as low as 3% in northwest OK, with temperatures expected to be well above 90°F and winds predicted to gust above 40 mph. The NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center has placed a huge swath of New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma under an “extremely critical” fire weather threat for Tuesday. It’s the most dire rating of fire threat used by SPC, and the second extremely-critical day in the past week, following Friday, April 13. “Given dry fuels and ongoing drought, the stage will be set for fast-moving fires exhibiting extreme behavior,” warned SPC in the outlook issued at 1 am CDT Tuesday.

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Echoing a global trend that’s associated with human-produced climate change, Oklahoma has seen signs of a ramp-up in hydrologic extremes over the past few years. May 2015 was the state’s wettest single month on record, and 2015 was its wettest year. “The November-December 2015 period was the wettest on record as well, and the sixth warmest. So the growing season extended into winter to some extent that year,” said McManus. The result was an unusually lush landscape going into the first part of 2016 that dried out quickly in the weeks leading up to the Anderson Creek fire.

Likewise, the summers of 2016 and 2017 were on the moist side, said McManus. “We also had a pretty severe ice storm during January 2017 that left lots of big fuels on the ground waiting for that spark,” McManus said. Later that year came the the state’s second-wettest August on record. “August would normally be a time we'd get rid of some growth in our typical summer burn season,” said McManus.

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Trends in land ownership and management, especially in recent years, have allowed eastern redcedar to spread more widely across the landscape. A state brochure noted that infestations of at least 50 redcedars per acre grew fourfold in the second half of the 20th century. It added: “The effects that the exploding populations of redcedar is having on the state might be compared to the soil erosion that occurred during the ‘Dust Bowl’ era of the 1930s-40s. It is becoming a problem in almost all coun­ties, and will take years and millions of dollars to bring the spread of cedars under control.”

According to the Nature Conservancy, “Perhaps the greatest threat to the productivity of Oklahoma's native landscapes and wildlife is the spread of eastern redcedar." Similar warnings have been issued in southern Kansas. The same volatile oils that give cedar its appealing scent—think of cedar air freshener, or cedar plank salmon—can make the tree a virtual firebomb when it’s dried out. A fire that’s racing across grasslands in hot, dry, windy conditions may get a sudden boost when it hits a bank of eastern cedar. (See the photo at top.) The species’ thick branching near the ground adds to the threat.

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https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/why-oklahoma-burning