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A12 SCIENCE
Friday 11 March 2022
Changing snowfall makes it harder to

fight fire with fire

By BRITTANY PETERSON and
MATTHEW BROWN
Associated Press
DECKERS, Colo. (AP) —
Dripping flaming fuel as
they go, a line of workers
slowly descends a steep,
snow-covered hillside
above central Colorado’s
South Platte River, torching
piles of woody debris that
erupt into flames shooting
two stories high.
It’s winter in the Rocky
Mountains, and fresh snow Fires burn tree debris near the Bridge Crossing picnic grounds in
cover allowed the crew Hatch Gulch on Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022, near Deckers, Colo.
of 11 to safely confine the Associated Press
controlled burn.
Such operations are a “It’s been a little bit harder vice and Mile High Youth
central piece of the Biden just because of shorter win- Corps could burn debris
administration’s $50 billion ters,” said David Needham, from twice the area they
plan to reduce the density a U.S. Forest Service ranger planned. Yet officials said
of western forests that have who led the Colorado burn climate change is making
been exploding into fire- operation in late February it more difficult to find that
storms as climate change when the thermometer sweet spot for safe burn-
bakes the region. hovered around zero de- ing. Spring is arriving earlier
But the same warming grees Fahrenheit (minus 18 and snow-covered ground
trends that worsen wildfires Celsius). Surrounding hill- is disappearing two weeks
will also challenge the ad- sides showed barren scars sooner, according to Rut-
ministration’s attempts to from past wildfires, includ- gers University researcher
guard against them. ing a 2002 blaze that de- and New Jersey state Cli-
Increasingly erratic weath- stroyed 133 homes and at matologist David Robinson,
er means snow is not al- the time was the largest in who has examined more
ways there when needed state history. than 50 years of snow cov-
to safely burn off tall debris “On days like this, we er data collected through
piles like those on Colo- capitalize on temperature satellite imagery.
rado’s Pike-San Isabel Na- being in the negatives,” “One thing we know about
tional Forest. And that seri- Needham said, “Even small climate change is it is in-
ously complicates the job snow storms coming in defi- creasing the variability and
of exhausted firefighters, nitely helps us with that.” the extremes we are expe-
now forced into service Across the Rockies, piles of riencing,” said Robinson.
year-round. slash and trees cleared to “Out West, once the sea-
Their goal is to cut and burn reduce fire hazards span son shifts, you get very dry,
enough vegetation that some 100,000 acres (40,500 very quickly and it stays dry
the next fires won’t be as hectares), waiting to be for months. So you have a
catastrophic as ones that burned once the right real tight window there.”
leveled vast forestland and amount of snow is on the 2020 was the worst wildfire
neighborhoods in Colo- ground. Sometimes there’s season on record in Colo-
rado, California, Oregon, too much, making the piles rado, where summers and
Montana and elsewhere. inaccessible. Other times falls also have been warm-
Western wildfires have be- there’s not enough snow er and drier, said Assistant
come more volatile as cli- and prescribed burns get State Climatologist Becky
mate change dries forests canceled so they don’t get Bolinger. It’s “a completely
already thick with vegeta- out of hand like a previous different ball game in terms
tion from years of inten- one that led to fatalities. of wildfires,” she said.
sive fire suppression. And An overnight snow in cen- For parts of the Rockies, this
the window for controlled tral Colorado meant the winter brought too much
burns is shrinking. crew from the forest ser- snow, forcing officials to
delay burns. Meanwhile,
parts of Wyoming haven’t
received enough snow
to moisten the ground
and allow fuel piles to be
torched. Even when there
is snow, that doesn’t mean
it will last until the debris
stops smoldering, said Bri-
an Keating with the Forest
Service’s Rocky Mountain
region.q