What I don't get is that most campgrounds prohibit collecting dead wood for campfires, which is precisely what causes the forests to burn uncontrollably. A brush fire sans dead wood will quickly burn itself out and spare the larger trees and shrubbery.
I was camping at Breitenbush the day prior to the fires that took it out, and still haven't been back to survey the damage.
Back in the day when they permitted vehicles to gain easy access to the area, we'd burn all the dead wood around for campfires, and I bet that would have spared the area from the recent wildfire.
Perhaps I'm wrong though, and the fire spread from large tree, to large tree because drought made them too dry?
When you drive around in the dry part of Oregon, all the large pine trees have black bark at the base from the various brush fires the trees have survived.
The theory being frequent smaller fires prevent the large calamitous ones.
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Originally Posted by JSH
Considering that the majority of California and Oregon are either in exceptional or severe drought I personally don't fine it odd that we are having lots of fires.
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My sense is that last month was warmer and much drier than normal here in the valley. I've had my sprinkler controller on for 2 months now, and normally I wouldn't be hooking it up until right about now... just looked out my office window while typing this and noticed some drops of rain on the porch, which is the first precip I can remember in weeks.
Already had a couple evenings of AC use, which I normally wouldn't run until July.
With regards to global warming, I readily accept that it can change precipitation patterns, but I'm very skeptical of the claims that those changes only ever cause problems for us. How does more overall precipitation exist while drought increases? More overall rainfall and more overall drought seem to be opposing ideas.