Alaska is on pace for a historic fire season, spurred on by warm temperatures, a diminished snowpack, and an apparent uptick in lightning strikes.
Alaska is on pace for a historic fire season, spurred on by warm temperatures, a diminished snowpack, and an apparent uptick in lightning strikes. Fires have ripped through 2 million acres so far this year, roughly 10 times the total area burned in all of 2021.
“While this doesn’t guarantee a record fire season this year, it does illustrate how dry conditions are across the state,” the Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska Fire Service said in a statement. “It’s also an indicator of how busy firefighters have been so far this season with several months still left to go.”
Alaska’s snowpack thawed quickly in the spring heat — the state had its third-warmest and fourth-driest May on record — helping give rise to a large number of wildfires. “This year has been an unusually active fire season in the region, with abnormally warm and dry conditions that led to more than 300 wildfires igniting in recent weeks,” NOAA said in a statement. “Many of these were sparked by nearly 5,000 lightning strikes from thunderstorms that moved across south-central and southwestern Alaska in early June.”
Read more at: Yale Environment 360
The Apoon Pass Fire in southwest Alaska, June 19, 2022. (Photo Credit: Ryan Mcpherson / Bureau of Land Management Alaska Fire Service)
