By Doyle Rice
USA TODAY
BOISE, Idaho — The USA is on track for its quietest wildfire year since 1998, and firefighter deaths are the lowest on record, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
“Right now, we’re at 3.3 million acres burned,” says Rick Ochoa, fire weather program manager of the fire center in Boise.
Seven firefighters have lost their lives fighting blazes this year, says Randy Eardley, deputy chief of external affairs at the fire center. That is the fewest deaths since records for firefighter deaths began in 1987, and far below the 10-year average of 20 deaths per year.
The annual average of acres burned January through November from 2000 to 2009 is 6.8 million. By contrast, more than 9 million acres burned in 2006 and again in 2007.
Ochoa says persistently cool, wet weather in the normally arid and fire-plagued West throughout the late spring and summer were the primary factors for the drop in acres burned. “The West never really dried out or warmed up,” Ochoa adds.
The South was also wetter than average. “We had an El Nino earlier this year, which typically produces a wet pattern over the southern tier of states,” he says.
The El Nino and the La Nina climate patterns -- warming and cooling of tropical Pacific Ocean waters -- strongly affect weather conditions in the USA. During a La Nina pattern, conditions are dry across southern states.
More than a third of wildfires this year were human-caused, either accidentally or deliberately.
Ochoa says 63% of the acres burned were because of lightning and 37% were human-caused. “In general, about 75% of the western fires are historically caused by lightning,” he says.
The transition from an El Nino to a La Nina this past summer, along with ongoing drought, will increase the likelihood for wildfires across the southern USA through the winter and into the spring, Ochoa says.
“Because we have that strong La Nina, it should be dry from eastern New Mexico to Texas to Florida,” he notes. Wildfires are most common through the winter in the southern Plains, and in March in Florida.
The dryness is already causing problems in Texas and Oklahoma, according to the most recent U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly government publication. It said: “Some impacts on crops, grasslands, and livestock upkeep have been reported, and burn bans have been mandated in a number of counties in this region.”
Georgia and Florida have also been extremely dry recently. According to the drought monitor, 90% of Georgia and 69% of Florida is in drought. Over the past 90 days, parts of northeastern and east-central Florida have received about 1 foot less than their average rainfall.
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