A changing climate may bring many more days per year of extreme wildfire risk to Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
The findings from a new study also suggest people in those states should brace for more of these days at seemingly unlikely times of the year.
“Even in the winter,” said Guo Yu, an assistant research professor at the Desert Research Institute who studies precipitation and climate change. “In the future, when we have a drier and warmer winter, there’s a high probability wildfire could occur.”
Yu and his colleagues looked at the four most common North American indices that firefighting agencies use to stay alert about wildfire-prone weather.
Think of these as more advanced versions of the Smokey Bear fire danger levels that parks sometimes display, he said.
The indices pull together conditions such as wind speed and humidity relative to temperature.
Researchers combined them with climate change models to project wildfire risks into the future.
This analysis suggests that by the last decade of this century, the region that includes Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas will see 30 more days per year of extreme risk for wildfire, Yu said. Today, this region typically experiences about six of these days annually.
The extra days of extreme risk will be scattered throughout the year, including more instances of these conditions in the wintertime.
Kansas dealt with just that in 2021, when the Four-County Fire struck the Smoky Hills just two weeks before Christmas.
An extreme windstorm with gusts up to 100 mph carried flames across more than 120,000 acres of Russell, Ellis, Osborne and Rooks counties. Scattered blazes burned thousands of acres elsewhere, with 54 wildfires starting in 34 counties on a single day.
Fire agencies are stretched thin
The expected increase in wildfire-prone weather conditions highlights the importance of taking preventive measures in a region that has begun to see more destructive blazes than in decades past.
And it raises questions about how to support the already stretched firefighting agencies that protect rural areas. About 80% of the state’s fire departments consist entirely of volunteers.
When fires are small and easily contained, firefighters can get the job done quickly. But increasingly, volunteers find themselves called upon to tackle blazes that last many hours and days.
