Do unseasonably warm temperatures, spring wildfires foretell devastating Oregon fire season?
OregonLive.com
1 hr ago
Catalina Gaitán, oregonlive.com
With the return of unseasonably warm temperatures, widespread drought, wildfires and burn bans, it’s been difficult for some Oregonians not to recall last September, when wildland blazes burned over 1 million acres, killed nine people and displaced nearly 40,000 others.
But while climate change is making wildfires more common, experts say, it takes an unlikely combination of weather conditions to create a fire season as deadly and costly as the Northwest experienced in 2020.
And even though Oregonians should be taking steps to be prepared for wildfires, they shouldn’t take this spring’s unusually warm weather as a harbinger of an especially harrowing fire season — or a sign that sunny, warm days are here to stay.