200,000-acre wildfire seasons could become more commonplace due to lack of precipitation as well as development, climate change With more than half of Colorado in a state of severe to exceptional drought — its driest conditions since 2002 — fire has found opportune conditions to scorch a path this year across more than 200,000 acres in the state, torching dozens of buildings and prompting hundreds of people to evacuate.
"Given the (weak) snowpack conditions we’ve seen and the heat we’ve seen, we’ve put together the perfect ingredients for these kinds of fires," Peter Goble, drought specialist with the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University, said this week.
Snowpack levels in the southwest corner of the state, where the 416 fire has burned more than 54,000 acres north of Durango since June 1, were that area’s second-worst ever, Goble said.
And the mid-May melt-out from higher elevations in the San Juan Mountains happened earlier than ever, he said.
But he said there is reason to hope that the worst is over, as expected July rains should start to provide relief, especially to the southern half of the state, hardest hit by the arid conditions.
Jennifer Balch, assistant professor of geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said there is an undeniable link between both a warming climate and increased aridity with wildfires that are mounting in scope and frequency across the American West.
"In the Western U.S., regional temperatures have increased by almost 2 degrees since the 1970s, snowmelt is occurring a month earlier in some places and fire season length has increased by almost three months," she said.
Where there were 20 large fires a year then, since 2010 well over 100 large fires each year are burning."
And with more people moving into Colorado and building new homes where once there was quiet forest land or empty prairie, Balch said, the fire danger goes up.
"Over the last two decades in the continental United States, people started 84 percent of our wildfires."