Weather and Climate News

Wildfire Season Is Smoking Out the Northwest

Fire season is here. Following a very wet winter, we are in the midst of a surprisingly active fire season. As of Monday, a total of 987,000 acres have burned in 2017 across the Northwest, encompassing the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. This comes as a surprise because fire season outlooks issued just a couple months ago called

July Was Record Hot for Parts of Alaska and the West

The northernmost city in the United States just had its hottest July on record, as other spots in Alaska had their hottest month overall. Heat records also fell in a few western cities, as well as the fearsomely hot Death Valley, where July was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth. Those hotspots stood out in what was the 10th hottest July on

Wildfire Season Is Scorching the West

The West is ablaze as the summer wildfire season has gotten off to an intense start. More than 37,000 fires have burned more than 5.2 million acres nationally since the beginning of the year, with 47 large fires burning across nine states as of Friday. The relatively early activity is quickly becoming the norm, with rising temperatures making the

Number of Large Fires Rising in the West

Wildfires have burned more than 4.5 million acres in the U.S. so far in 2017. That’s 38 percent more than the average acreage burned for the year-to-date over the past decade. And it is the third largest area burned by wildfires in the last decade through late July. The bulk of U.S. wildfires burn in the western half of the country because soils

The West Is on Fire As Heat Records Fall

From Phoenix to Boise, high temperature records fell like dominoes over the weekend as an impressive heat wave engulfed the western U.S., helping to fuel several wildfires. While heat waves are a regular part of summer weather, the steady warming of the planet means those heat waves are getting ever hotter, making record heat more and more likely

The Climate Context for Raleigh’s Rains and Florida’s Fires

Two opposing weather situations are playing out right now in the Southeast: While parts of North Carolina are submerged thanks to a record downpour, Florida is battling wildfires fueled by a drought that now outranks the one in California. While these conditions sit at opposite ends of the weather seesaw, both may be affected by a changing climate.

Heat and Fires Were the Themes for Fall

The end of November marks the end of meteorological fall. According to preliminary data from the Southeast Regional Climate Center, most of the country had a fall that was substantially warmer than normal from September through November, with the most intense warmth blanketing the eastern two-thirds of the U.S.. While there were a few wet spots

What a Warmer Future Means for Southeastern Wildfires

When Jeff Prestemon stepped outside his home near Raleigh, N.C., last Friday around 9 a.m., the skies were clear, the air “perfectly breathable.” But just an hour-and-a-half later, the winds had shifted, drawing with them the smoke from regional wildfires. “It was putrid,” Prestemon, a research forester with the U.S. Forest Service, said. “It stung

Climate Change Behind Surge in Western Wildfires

The number of acres of forest burning yearly in large Western fires ballooned nine-fold from 1984 to 2015, with climate pollution and natural changes in the weather playing roughly equal roles in driving the deadly trend, research published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded. The study showed that more than a

Fires Flare Up Out West While Rains Flood East

The eastern and western ends of the country have offered a stark study in weather contrasts in recent days. On the West Coast, a heat wave has once again settled in, helping to fuel wildfires, one of which has destroyed dozens of homes, while on the East Coast, a string of thunderstorms wrung out massive rains over West Virginia and caused deadly

Hotter Years, More Fires

The 2016 wildfire season has barely begun and dozens of large wildfires have already raged through Western states, with hundreds of thousands of acres burned. This comes on the heels of a 2015 wildfire season that was the worst on record in the U.S., with more than 10 million acres burned. This intense activity is indicative of a growing trend in

The Heat Goes On: Southwest Heat Peaks, But Not Going Anywhere

June is usually the hottest month of the year in the Southwest, but even by that measure, this year has been a stand-out. Record-breaking heat baked the region starting over the weekend thanks to an intense heat wave. The peak of the heat wave was earlier this week, when new daily record highs were set in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, and Yuma.