In West, September Brought Record Heat and Dry Weather
At Needles, California, which is also located in the unforgiving Mojave Desert, the average monthly temperature of 91.3°F tied for the hottest September on record. In addition, Reno, Nevada had its warmest September since records began there in 1888.… Read More
Report: The Age of Western Wildfires
The 2012 wildfire season isn't over yet, but already this year is shaping up to be the worst on record for fires in the American West. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, with two months still to go in the fire season, the total area already burned this year is 30 percent more than in an average year and fires burning right now acros… Read More
90 Years Later, Death Valley Sets World Temp Record
The searing heat waves that blanketed the nation earlier this summer sent temperatures soaring well above 110°F in parts of the U.S., but that’s nowhere close to the hottest temperature on record — an almost unimaginable 136.4° F, taken on September 13, 1922, in the Sahara Desert at El Azizia, Libya. That’s what the Guinness Book of World Records s… Read More
Raging Fire Season Highlights Human Cost of Firefighting
Earlier this month, a 20-year-old digging a fire line in the Idaho mountains was killed by a falling tree, making her the 12th person to die in forest firefighting operations around the country this year. When I attended her funeral a few days later, nearly 300 of her fellow U.S. Forest Service firefighters lined up outside Moscow, Idaho’s, Church … Read More
In Fear of Firebugs Across the West
In a little over a decade, the largest mountain pine beetle outbreak on record (by a factor of 10) has killed more than 70,000 square miles of Rocky Mountain forests — an area the size of Washington State. From above, the infested pine trees seem color-coded: green is healthy, red is dead, and after three or four years, the dead red needles fall of… Read More
Life Out West and On the Edge (of Wildfire)
When the Waldo Canyon fire ignited in the mountains near Colorado Springs this June, Cindy and Mark Maluschka started packing. The evacuation zone mapped out by city officials ended two streets away from them, but the Maluschkas have seen fires spread faster than expected before. The 2002 Hayman Fire — until this summer, the most destructive … Read More
Forest Service Fights All Fires Now, But at What Cost?
On July 12, lightning sparked a forest fire in western Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex — a place where wildfires are common this time of year. Usually, if they’re small and don’t threaten to get out of control, the U.S. Forest Service will let them burn. Small fires are good for the forest ecosystem, burning off dead timber and creating … Read More
Of Climate Change, Cows, and California Dreamin’
The California Milk Advisory Board has got to love this. The Board is the organization behind the “California cows are happy cows TV ads, which say California milk and cheese are better because the Golden State livestock enjoys such balmy weather — way better than, say, frigid, snowy Wisconsin, where cheese is so much a part of the local identity … Read More
