Fire risks from spread to wet American Northwest
ISSAQUAH, Wash. — Nestled in the foothills of Washington’s Cascade Mountains, the bustling Seattle suburb of Issaquah seems an unlikely candidate for anxiety over wildfires.
The region, famous for its rainfall, has long escaped major burns even as global warming has driven an increase in the size and number of wildfires elsewhere in the American West.
But according to experts, previously too-wet-to-burn parts of the Pacific Northwest face an increasing risk of significant wildfires due to changes in its climate driven by the same phenomenon: Global warming is bringing higher temperatures, lower humidity and longer stretches of drought.
And the region is uniquely exposed to the threat, with property owners who are often less prepared for fire than those in drier places and Firefighter Jay Flora sprays a hot spot on a downed tree along the Trail of Cedars across the river from Newhalem, Wash. According to experts, previously too-wet-to-burn parts of the Pacific Northwest now face an increasing risk of significant wildfires because of climate change. more homes tucked along winds and few roads forests than any other western leading out. state. “The only thing that’s keep
In Issaquah and towns like ing it from going off like a it across the region, that takes nuclear bomb is the weather,” a shape familiar from recent said Chris Dicus, a profesdestructive California wildfires: sor at California Polytechnic heavy vegetation that State University, San Luis spills into backyards, often Obispo and head of the Association pressing against houses in for Fire Ecology, a neighborhoods built along national group that studies mountains, with strong seasonal wildfire and includes experts from the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey.
With historically short summers, the swath of densely forested coastal territory stretching from British Columbia into northwestern Oregon has long been cloaked in a protective veil of moisture, making even medium-sized fires relatively rare. So-called “megafires” — enveloping hundreds of thousands of acres and even generating their own weather — have occurred only at century-plus intervals.
But global warming is changing the region’s seasons. A national climate assessment prepared by 13 federal agencies and released in 2018 said the Pacific Northwest had warmed nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900 and that trend would continue into the century, leading to warmer winters and less mountain snowpack.
Experts say these long