The East Fork Fire in Western Alaska is the state’s largest fire right now and it’s burning in a region where — just a couple decades ago — large fires would not have been expected.
ByThe North Star Fire Crew clears brush around power poles on the road between St. Mary’s and Pitka’s Point on June 11, 2022 as the East Fork Fire nears.
The East Fork Fire in Western Alaska is the state’s largest fire at the moment, estimated at more than 150,000 acres Thursday, and it’s burning in a region where, just a couple decades ago, large fires would not have been expected. And a major contributing factor is our warming climate, says climate specialist Rick Thoman with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Thoman says hot, dry weather and a lightning strike at the end of May combined to make the East Fork Fire the biggest tundra fire on record, by far, for the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region.: You know, really prior to about 2015, there were a handful of documented wildfires on the tundra in the Y-K Delta, but very few. There’s been a big uptick. Similarly, in the upper Bristol Bay Area, the Dillingham, King Salmon area, historically there’s been only a relatively few number of fires.
A map showing the extent of the East Fork fire on June 14, 2022. The tundra fire was estimated to have grown by about another 20,000 acres as of June 16. : So we’ve talked about the shorter-term implications of the weather changing, but then there’s some longer-term things that are affecting this too, right? So how does the changing climate factor into this?: Well, our changing climate, our changing environment, of course, didn’t cause the thunderstorm on May 31 that sparked the East Fork Fire.
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