YTD As Of 4/27, 1.5 M Acres Of TX Burned; 840 Fires, 17 Major Still Burning

[hatrack]

EDIT

For others, it has been. The wildfires still burning through Texas are some of the worst the state has ever seen. Even after weeks of fighting, on April 27 there were still 17 major fires burning, covering about 573,000 acres, according to the Texas Forest Service. And since January, 840 fires have consumed more than 1.5 million acres. That already far eclipses the 293,000 acres that burned in Texas in all of 2010, and is approaching the 3.4 million acres that burned across the entire U.S. last year.

And while the fires have consumed homes, businesses, and huge numbers of livestock already, Myers and others seem upbeat, and the efforts to push back the burns have their success stories. According to the Texas Forest Service, more than 5,600 structures have been saved due to coordinated efforts among federal, state, and local agencies.

The fires continue to rage, though, with help from a historically severe drought across the region. More frequent and intense droughts are a consistent finding of many climate projections, although attributing a particular drought, such as the current one, to climate change is fraught with complexity. "These are drought conditions that one might expect to see every 20 to 50 years," said David Brown, regional director with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Regional Climate Services, in a conference call with reporters. On April 25, he said that "all of Texas is covered in drought conditions for the first time in the history of the U.S. Drought Monitor, going back nearly a decade."

Brown added that this drought was “a long time in coming." Last month was the driest March Texas has had in the 117 years of available records, and a strong La Niña pattern in the Pacific Ocean "often corresponds to dry winter conditions in the southern United States," Brown said. La Niña, characterized by cooler than average water temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, tends to steer the jet stream north of Texas, causing rains to bypass the state, as well as other parts of the southern tier.

EDIT

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/texas-wildfires-continue-to-rage-amidst-historic-drought-conditions/

[damntexdem]

1. Oh, y'all, Texas is so big that we hardly even notice. Cough, cough, hack ...

;-)

Actually, the cough and hack would be appropriate on the basis of Texas' nonexistent enforcement of air pollution laws.