“Isn’t it interesting that yearly fires are only a problem within California. With the millions of acres throughout the country of national forests, its California that seems to consistently have the problems. Why is that?”
Most of California is normally very dry.
When the fall Santa Ana winds come they bring hot dry air from the desert and can blow to 70 mph. The Santa Ana winds make fires much harder to fight.
High California property prices mean people tend to live wherever they can, such as in inflammable brush country.
Tell the smokejumpers up in Lake Almador about the Santa Ana winds...I’m sure they’re really interested.
The Great Fire (also commonly referred to as the Big Blowup, the Big Burn, or the Devil's Broom fire) was a wildfire in the western United States that burned three million acres (4,700 sq mi) in North Idaho and Western Montana, with extensions into Eastern Washington and Southeast British Columbia. The area burned included large parts of the Bitterroot, Cabinet, Clearwater, Coeur d'Alene, Flathead, Kaniksu, Kootenai, Lewis and Clark, Lolo, and St. Joe National Forests.The fire burned over two days, August 20–21, after strong winds caused numerous smaller fires to combine into a firestorm of unprecedented size. It killed 87 people, mostly firefighters,and destroyed numerous manmade structures, including several entire towns. It is believed to be the largest, although not the deadliest, forest fire in U.S. history; the extensive burned area was approximately the size of the state of Connecticut.
Smoke from the fire was said to have been seen as far east as Watertown, NY. At night, five hundred miles out into the Pacific Ocean, ships could not navigate by the stars because the sky was cloudy with smoke.
The extreme scorching heat of the sudden blowup can be attributed to the expansive Western white pine forests that covered much of northern Idaho. Hydrocarbons in the trees' resinous sap boiled out and created a cloud of highly flammable gas that blanketed hundreds of square miles, which then spontaneously detonated dozens of times, each time sending tongues of flame thousands of feet into the sky and creating a rolling wave of fire that destroyed anything and everything in its path.
Caused by man-made Global Warming no doubt, right? Caused by forest mismanagement, right?
When did this fire occur?
1910.