{"id":550,"date":"2025-10-07T15:28:03","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T15:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/bbc-sciencefocus\/?p=550"},"modified":"2025-10-07T15:28:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T15:28:05","slug":"major-megafires-are-now-primed-to-ignite-across-the-us-and-thats-only-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/bbc-sciencefocus\/2025\/10\/07\/major-megafires-are-now-primed-to-ignite-across-the-us-and-thats-only-the-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"Major \u2018megafires\u2019 are now primed to ignite across the US. And that\u2019s only the beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Environment<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US is on the brink of a \u2018megafire\u2019 crisis. All it needs is a spark<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

The US is a tinderbox, just waiting to go up in flames<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By Tom Howarth<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7 October, 2025<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Photo credit: Getty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

It began on the afternoon of 14 July 2014, as storm clouds gathered over a remote patch of north-central Washington state. They carried no rain, only a crackle of electricity. Lightning ripped through the heavy air, striking the ground and setting the stage for disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within hours, four separate blazes roared to life. Fanned by hot, relentless wind, the flames soon converged into a single inferno. Washington now had a megafire on its hands, a blaze beyond all normal categorisation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A towering column of smoke punched 30,000ft (9km) into the sky, scattering embers that rained down to ignite parched grass, brittle trees and bone-dry brush. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time it was over, an area the size of Los Angeles lay scorched, with more than 350 homes reduced to ash. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The blaze became known as the Carlton Complex fire \u2013 the largest in Washington\u2019s history, surpassing the infamous Yacolt Burn of 1902. But while the previous record had held for more than a century, this one would last barely a year. In 2015, another wave of wildfires swept across the state, laying waste to over 300,000 acres of land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The record for the hottest, driest summer was again broken in 2017, leading to more fires. Photo credit: Alamy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I first started, a mind-boggingly large fire was 10,000 acres,\u201d says Vaughn Cork, a fuels analyst at Washington\u2019s Department of Natural Resources and a wildland firefighter with over 20 years\u2019 experience battling blazes in the state. \u201cNow we don\u2019t even bat an eye at that \u2013 it\u2019s not even considered a large fire on the ground until it\u2019s north of 50,000 acres.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cork\u2019s experience isn\u2019t unique. Across Washington, the Pacific Northwest and the entire United States, fires are getting bigger, badder, hotter and harder to control. The reasons are far from straightforward; the solutions, even less so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

America ablaze<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Carlton Complex would once have been considered an exceedingly rare, if not freak, event. Today, it looks less like an outlier and more like part of a disturbing new normal. Across the US, wildfires are growing in frequency, intensity and scale, with impacts spreading far beyond the burn zone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past two decades, the number of wildfires in the US has doubled compared to the late 20th century. In some regions, such as the Great Plains, the increase has been even more dramatic, with four times as many fires as before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The season itself has also stretched. Peak fire activity, which used to arrive in August, now comes a full month earlier, in July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But these fires aren\u2019t just more common \u2013 they\u2019re fiercer. The fastest-moving blazes in the West today grow around 250 per cent faster than they did at the turn of the millennium, and in California that jumps to 400 per cent. This explosive behaviour makes these blazes almost impossible to contain once they\u2019ve escaped initial suppression efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scale, too, is staggering. Every one of the ten largest US wildfire seasons on record has happened since 2004. An area the size of five Yellowstone National Parks is routinely burned annually, and those numbers are continuing, on average, to climb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Whole landscapes are being reshaped. Between 2015 and 2021, wildfires tore through 85 per cent of California\u2019s giant sequoia groves. These are trees that can live for thousands of years, yet in a single season an estimated one in ten of the world\u2019s remaining mature sequoias was lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Communities in the line of fire face devastating losses: California\u2019s 2018 Camp Fire alone destroyed nearly 19,000 structures, displaced 50,000 people and caused $12.5 billion in damages. This year\u2019s LA fires dwarf that figure, with damages over $100 billion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wildfires, in short, are no longer just a problem for the western US. They are a national crisis \u2013 ballooning in size and ferocity just about everywhere you look.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sequoia\u2019s thick bark means they are naturally resistant to fire, but increased drought leaves even these giants vulnerable. Photo credit: Getty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A tale of two fire regimes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You might assume climate change alone explains today\u2019s wildfires. And it\u2019s true, rising heat plays a huge role. But the reality, much like the air during fire season, is a little hazier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor there to be a fire, you need two things,\u201d says Dr Olivia Haas, an expert on global fire patterns at the University of Reading. \u201cEnough vegetation to burn, and for that vegetation to be dry enough to ignite.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most landscapes, she explains, fall into one of two camps. Some are fuel-limited \u2013 dry enough to burn, but with little vegetation to feed the flames. Others are dryness-limited \u2013 dense with plant matter to burn, but too wet to catch fire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Western Washington is a textbook case of a dryness-limited landscape. It\u2019s a lush, steep and fuel-rich temperate rainforest. Historically, fires here have been rare. The region\u2019s \u2018fire return interval\u2019 \u2013 the average time between major blazes \u2013 has typically been measured in centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That doesn\u2019t mean megafires, which are typically defined as any blaze over 100,000 acres, have never happened. The infamous 1902 Yacolt Burn, for instance, was vast even by today\u2019s standards, with over 230,000 acres destroyed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But such events usually required an unusual set of ingredients: prolonged drought in the damp forests, followed by a strong offshore wind from the east.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Normally, Washington\u2019s prevailing winds blow in from the Pacific Ocean, bringing fire-suppressing moist air to the whole northwest US. Easterly winds, meanwhile, have travelled across the landscape of the US, meaning they are much drier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, climate change is making droughts in the Pacific Northwest more frequent and severe, and heatwaves are happening more often, with greater intensity. When an easterly wind does arrive, the tinderbox conditions are already set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read More:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n