To understand why the Texas fires have been so fierce you have to look to last spring, said Luke Kanclerz, a fire analyst at Texas A&M Forest Service. Why did the Texas fires grow so explosively? In many cases, climate change is playing a role, he added, “enabling more active fire seasons and very large fire events.” What ties many of these fires together, he told CNN, is “rapid rates of fire spread and a sense of surprise on how quickly individual fires grew - or in the case of Canada, their entire fire season.” “We have certainly seen plenty of extreme and catastrophic fires and fire seasons across the globe in the past decade,” said John Abatzoglou, a climate professor at the University of California, Merced. Cpl Marc-Andre Leclerc/Canadian Forces via Reuters And in early February, wildfires tore through parts of Chile, killing more than 130 people.įlames spread through the forest near Mistissini, Quebec, Canada, in June 2023. In Greece, winds and record temperatures led to deadly fires last summer, the largest ever recorded in the European Union. Canada experienced its worst wildfire season on record in 2023, with flames scorching more than 18 million hectares (44.5 million acres) - more than double the previous record. In California, 80% of the state’s largest wildfires have occurred in the last decade, including the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise.īut it’s not just the US grappling with alarming new fire behavior. The fire that ripped through Maui in August, whipped up by a combination of heat, drought and strong winds, killed at least 100 people and was the deadliest US wildfire in more than a century. The past several years have brought some of the United States’ most devastating fires. As humans continue to heat up the world with fossil fuel pollution, scientists warn these kinds of fires will only become more common. This fire adds to an ever-lengthening list of rapidly spreading, destructive wildfires in the US and elsewhere. Its severity was due to a perfect storm of environmental factors: highly flammable grasses and strong winds combined with record-high temperatures and dry conditions - the kind of extreme weather often exacerbated by climate change. Texas is no stranger to winter wildfires, but the ferocity of the Smokehouse Creek fire - the state’s largest on record after burning through more than 1 million acres - caught even the experts off guard.
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