Anchorage Jul 25 (BUS): Alaska is burning this year in ways we rarely ever see, from the largest wildfire in an essentially fireproof southwest region to a pair of fires that tore through forests and produced smoke that blew hundreds of miles to the Bering Sea community in Nome, Where fresh clean air has been pushed into a very unhealthy category.
More than 530 wildfires have burned an area the size of Connecticut, the Associated Press reports, still the worst of the fire season ahead.
As some properties burn, some residents were forced to evacuate and one person was killed when a helicopter pilot died last month when he crashed while trying to carry a load of equipment for firefighters.
Recent rains have helped, but long-term forecasts show a similar pattern for 2004 when July rains gave way to the high-pressure regimes, hot days, low humidity, and lightning strikes that fueled Alaska’s worst fires.
“The frequency of these major seasons has doubled than in the second half of the 20th century,” said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska’s International Arctic Research Center.
“And there is no reason to believe that this will not continue.”
ZHB