While much of the country is experiencing cold weather, ice and snow we here on the west coast are experiencing drought conditions, We hear about California on the national news but it also applies to my state of Oregon. Dry conditions and high winds have resulted in unheard of January forest fires in normally soggy Western Oregon.
ARCH CAPE, Ore. — Rare winter wildfires in the Oregon Coast Range, visible from as far as 20 miles away, continued to burn early Friday morning east of Arch Cape.
The first was reported about 3 p.m. Thursday and second one about midnight south of the original fire, according to Seaside police. Prior slash burn were being investigated as one possible cause.
The fires, called Falcon and Shingle, were at 50 and 30 acres respectively. A flight restriction was put in the place around the fires.
Now I have lived in Western Oregon most of my life and I don’t remember any forest fires in January. But this should come as no surprise – the climate models have predicted that the Western United States would experience a drier and windier climate. Since the linked article was posted 3 more fires have been reported.
Global Warming/Climate Change never meant that the entire planet would turn into Hawaii. The predictions were that there would be more violent storms, that there would be areas that were warmer and yes areas that would be colder. There would be areas of drought and areas of devastating floods. We have seen all of those things. In the US we have seen more and more powerful tornadoes in the Western Pacific they have seen more powerful typhoons. But I have little faith that anything will be done, in fact it’s probably already too late. It’s easy to blame the politicians and large energy corporations but it’s not that simple. We are all to blame because we don’t want to give up our life style.