From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Cliff Mass,
You hear this all the time in the media and by climate advocacy groups:
A below-normal snowpack means enhanced wildfire danger in Washington State.
Some samples are shown below:
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The truth is that such claims are not true. Snowpack variability has very little correlation with the area of local wildfires.
Other meteorological conditions are FAR more important than snowpack regarding wildfire acreage and the large wildfires in our region.
The facts are very clear. To demonstrate the lack of relationship between snowpack and wildfire area, below is a plot of April 1 snowpack (the standard measure)–shown by the blue line– and the annual acreage of burned area–red line– for Washington State for 2002 to 2025.
You will notice very little correlation between the two lines. Snowpack has ups and downs, perhaps a slight downward trend. Wildfire acreage has wild excursions that generally are not associated with changes in snowpack.
Of the 24 years shown, only ONE (2015) had a combination of low snowpack and large wildfire area. But it was NOT because of snowpack.
The year was unusual for other reasons, with a crazy, persistent summer ridge of high pressure over the region, that produced very anomalous high temperatures–something shown below, and lack of summer precipitation. 2015 was the hottest summer on record in our region.
Snowpack has very little to do with regional wildfires. High temperature during the summer is a major contributor, since it contributes to drying of surface fuels. High winds are a contributor to some of the biggest fires, since winds can fan and spread the flames, and can contribute to fire ignition (e.g, from wildfires). Low summer relative humidity is a contributor. Low summer precipitation can contribute since that leads to low fuel moisture.
Snowpack has little to do with our local wildfires. During a normal year, the snowpack has generally melted by early summer over the lower to middle elevations where most wildfires occur. Remember, most of wildfire are in mid-summer to early fall. Interestingly, above-normal snowfall can contribute to MORE wildfires if it provides moisture for more vegetative growth. Vegetation that later dries and becomes flammable.
Why is the Seattle Times and others providing obviously false information to the public about snowpack and wildfire? Even Google’s AI knows better:
I’m fired up to read WUWT exposing yet another snow job from the ecogrifters.
Being as how some fraction of eco-grifters are also eco-terrorists and eco-arsonists, the long-term trend for Washington is not good.
It’s the multi-topic renegade thing.
People who were in Extinction Rebellion moved to Just Stop Oil to Take Back Control etc And then to Palestine. The same people organising and attending every time with their brainwashed youth and elderly – who should know better.
It’s a calling. Not everybody wants to be a prison officer or a nurse.
You hear this all the time in the media and by climate advocacy groups
I wonder why?
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” –
Joseph Goebbels
Where I am in the Selkirk Range the snow pack is low. However we had a number of periods of warm temperature and heavy rain onto the snow. I am pretty sure that the water content of the snow base is very high. I have not measured.
Put your boots on and get out there!
Story tip – FOI has to go.
I have posted on how any [inconvenient] inquiry will be shut down, the Met Office will be jubilant.
Opposition is mounting to Labour’s mooted plan to curb the use of Freedom of Information requests.
A double-header of FT stories this month saw one spuriously complain that FOIs were being used by China to gain intelligence and other two days later confirming that the government wants to crack down on FOI use. – Proposals include dropping the ‘cost threshold’ which is meant to prevent requests taking too much of officials’ time…
Guido Fawkes.
China provides an excuse along with a “lack of funds”…
I think a double whisky is indicated around about now…
According to our trolls, 2015, when low snow pack occurred in conjunction with a high fire season proves the theory. All the other data points are just noise.
I well remember the summer of 2015. We joined a family reunion in the town of Coulee Dam in central Washington State and spent the day kayaking on the Columbia River west of Grand Coulee Dam.
The smoke from a number of wildfires in the western US was so thick our eyes were burning the whole time we were on the river.
Later in the day, a family picnic was held with relatives from all over the state in attendance. The Seattle relatives were concerned about wildfires, believing these were getting much worse because of human-caused climate change. In their opinion, our burning of fossil fuels was the ultimate root cause.
I decided to yank the Seattle relative’s chains by asking them why Boeing was still being allowed to build jet airliners in the Puget Sound area when those airliners were spreading CO2 all over the planet.
They were not amused by my question.
Thanks for this, Mr. Mass. The one thing I’ve noticed living in Western Washington is that, when the low snowpack years do roll around, the water system owners call a water emergency and place an added premium to water use for the NH summer months. My provider controls substantial land holdings surrounding the systems main watershed. They have in recent years installed a modern drinking water clarification/treatment facility adjacent to the headwaters, and increased capacity to serve the largest water user-a pulp paper mill that demanded nearly 1/3 or so of the system production. Our state Department of Ecology then, after years of pressure caused the closing of that mill throwing 400 or more locals out if a job. Lo and behold, the provider needed the other 2/3 of system users to pay for those system upgrades, and they added a base monthly fee also included tier volume pricing schemes, in addition to the ’emergency’ summer premium. I now can pay more for the static monthly fee than I pay for the actual water usage. Cest la vie, I guess.
Here in the Colorado Front Range definitely hot dry summers are the scariest . But starting the summer dry is worrisome . There have already been several thousand acre fires south east of here , and smoke from fires in Nebraska .
Much of Washington is wetter than here . And you look at the single largest inverse spikes in that graph and they show an apparent relationship of extremes .
Also lightning, high winds and most people with purple, pink, blue or green hair around here are scary.
If there’s too much snow, it creates more fuel and is a fire hazard.
If there’s not enough snow, the vegetation dries out and is a fire hazard.
The biomass in WA forests is 100+ years old. One year’s growth, large or small, makes little difference. The down and dead fuel loses moisture in summer whether the long gone snow pack was deep or shallow. Yet in forest fires green trees burn, and often more dead fuel is left after the fire than was present prior.
It’s the fuels — their quantity, arrangement, and continuity — that matters most. Control the fuels and you control the fires. To abandon stewardship is abandoning hope. Care for nature or suffer the consequences.
it’s the wind that matters most.
In my experience with bushfires, it’s the wind strength that turns a fairly docile, creeping fire front that struggles to ignite vegetation into one that consumes everything in its path – old, new, standing, grounded, dry, wet, green or dead.
Strong wind turns everything into “fuel”.
People are thinking of grass and bushes when they worry about fuel, not trees. Considering how fast grass dries, it’s not a useful worry.
For whatever reason, the Seattle Times has had a propensity for false climate alarms for over a decade. A classic example concerning ‘ocean acidification’ is given in essay Shell Games in ebook Blowing Smoke.
Fun fact: Snowpack neither heavy nor light, starts fires.