Story at a glance
- AccuWeather forecasters are predicting another active wildfire season this year.
- By the beginning of May, wildfires had already burned 1.1 million acres across the country.
- Forecasters are predicting an “above normal” season with somewhere between 68,000 and 72,000 fires and up to 8.3 million acres burned.
This year’s wildfire season will be just as intense as last year, forecasters predict.
AccuWeather forecasters are predicting an “above normal” wildfire season this year which typically runs from May to October. By early May, wildfires had already burned more than 1.1 million acres, more than twice the number burned by that time last year.
Senior Meteorologist Paul Pastelok told Changing America that early predictions for this fire season point to there being between 68,000 and 72,000 wildfires with total land burned peaking at around 8.1 to 8.3 million acres.
But those numbers could change depending on human activity, Pastelok added. Nearly 85 percent of all wildfires are set by humans, according to data from the National Park Service.
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“To predict that someone is going to light a campfire and it’s going to get out of control is hard to predict,” Pastelok told Changing America. “We can only predict the conditions and how favorable they may be over the course of the year.”
AccuWeather’s early predictions represent a significant increase in wildfires and acres burned compared to last year. In 2021, there were only about 59,000 wildfires, about 10,000 fewer than average, and 7 million acres burned, or roughly about the total area of Massachusetts.
But some of last year’s fires were some of the largest and longest in the country’s history. Northern California’s Dixie fire lasted for two and a half months and burned 964,000 acres and became the second largest and longest single fire in the state’s history.
Forecasters are attributing the predicted uptick in fires and acres burned this season to the extreme drought in the western part of the United States. Nearly 90 percent of the western part of the country is in some form of drought and the entire state of California is in some level of drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
“We have a lot of dry, good fuels that are there ready to be burned and it’s already starting to be pretty active,” said Pastelok. “The pace that we are at right now is ahead of the average.” The acreage burned at this point in the year should be closer to 735,000, he added.
California has already suffered a devasting fire, after a wildfire in the Southern California city of Laguna Niguel destroyed over 20 homes and forced residents to evacuate late Wednesday night.
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Published on May 13,2022