Scorched West to Sizzle All Summer, NOAA Says

Author Robert Roy Britt

Wildfires out west are cropping up like, well, wildfire. And the worst may be yet to come.

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center predicts above normal temperatures for the entire country west of the Mississippi, as well as Florida and New England, through September [Map].

"These areas could very well expect high temperatures for prolonged days, triggering heat waves and creating wildfire risks in many areas, especially in the West," the agency said in a statement today.

Already, 3.1 million acres in the U.S. have been burned by wildfires this year. The average acreage burnt by this time, over the past 10 years, is 986,000. See how your state is doing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Forces of Nature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to "Scorched West to Sizzle All Summer, NOAA Says"
tornado_chaser Says:
June 21st, 2006 at 12:07 pm

I'm sorry, but I live in the 80 percentile on the map and I must say: THIS IS NOTHING NEW! For the past couple years we've have major wildfires, and for the past hundreds of years we've had wildfires. Wildfires are natural ways for the forests to be cleaned out. Its just NOW we have more people inhabiting the woodlands and building houses where thes fires occur. Thats why there is such a hype about wildfires now, not because they're happening, but because they are happening near homes where people have conciously moved to. Also, people that have moved there or drive through there may "get lost" or throw their cig butts out the car window. This is the cause of the most recent fires! Another reason people should not be living in these areas!

Robert Roy Britt - www.livescience.com/
June 21st, 2006 at 1:26 pm

Your argument is a good one, TC. Same basic argument holds for people living in the Mississippi flood plane or on the hurricane-prone Outer Banks. Take it to the extreme, however, and no one should live in pretty much all of California, for the quake risk, or in the midwest, where sooner or later a tornado will hit them. Hard to draw lines, I suspect. There is some Darwinianism at play here . some folks will choose to live in safer locales, others will choose to be risky, and still others don't have much choice in the matter.

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