We know it’s hot and dry in Texas. Texas has suffered from unprecedented drought and wildfires this Spring, and the forecast for Summer doesn’t look to be any better. What we didn’t know was that the local county government of Guadalupe, Texas, in an effort to prevent wild fires, would impose a ban on all outside grilling and fire pits over the July 4th day holiday:
Officials in Guadalupe County, east of San Antonio, have issued an emergency burn ban that outlaws “all outdoor flames,” said Fire Marshall Kelly Kistner.
“Barbecue grills and pits come under that order as well,” Kistner told Reuters on Tuesday. “Everything that would produce a flame outside is covered by that order.”
Now this probably doesn’t sit well with the BBQ loving Texans of Guadalupe County, just as the ban on fireworks that have been put in place in other Texas counties probably isn’t making Texans happy either.
Severe drought conditions have prompted at least five Texas Panhandle counties to temporarily ban the use and sale of fireworks.
Potter, Carson and Armstrong counties each enacted a 60-hour disaster declaration Tuesday. Those counties then sent their declarations to Gov. Rick Perry, who has the authority to extend up to 30 days the period the orders are in effect.
The counties want to keep the orders in place through the July 4 holiday, said Lucy Nashed, a Perry spokeswoman. Parmer and Hall counties also sent declaration requests to Perry, Nashed said. Perry has already granted Hall’s request.
I don’t imagine that a lot of Texans take kindly to being told they cannot BBQ outdoors or shoot of fireworks this year, but then I imagine that they never thought they’d be facing such a severe drought either, one of the worst in its history:
Texas has seen close to three million acres of ranch land scorched by massive wildfires this year, mainly fueled by the dry conditions. Kistner said Guadalupe County has been “lucky” not have had any brush fires – and hopes to keep it that way. […]
“The entire period of October through May was the driest ever, and ranks as the driest eight consecutive months ever in Texas,” [the state’s climatologist John Nielson-Gammon.] said.
And its not just Guadalupe County. Montgomery County in the Woodlands area of suburban Houston also has a burn ban in place:
Montgomery County remains in “exceptional” drought status. According to officials, this designation is the most severe level possible. On the Keetch Byram Drought Index, a scale that helps measure drought conditions, Montgomery County is averaging 714, with some areas in South County and The Woodlands nearing 750. The KBDI ranges from 0-800, with 700 or more considered to be extreme levels of drought and fire danger. […]
Because of the extremely dry conditions, Montgomery County is under a burn ban.
“The fire danger is classified as extreme,” Williams said in a recent interview. “What most people may not realize is this is a level we don’t see until the middle of summer, if we see it at all. What it really tells us is how bad it will be going forward.”
Officials there say that recent fires in the area could have been set off by as little as someone tossing a lit cigarette out the window. I live in western NY and people toss cigarettes out the window all the time, but then we don’t have a drought index of over 700 either.
Then again, things could be worse. More than 3000 Arizonans have been evacuated from areas affected by the wildfires in that state:
(Reuters) – A forest fire that has scorched over 480 square miles in eastern Arizona flared out of control for a 10th day on Tuesday and advanced on two mountain towns near New Mexico, forcing hundreds more people from their homes.
The latest evacuations raised the number of residents displaced by the wildfire, the second-largest on record in Arizona, to as many as 3,500 in communities flanking the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest, state and local officials said.
It might be odd to see these severe drought conditions juxtaposed with the severe flooding in the Ohio, Mississippi and other caused by heavy precipitation events this winter and spring in the Midwest and northern Plains states. Yet, that seems to be the new reality over the last decade, as extreme weather events from tornadoes, hurricanes, extreme precipitation events, droughts and wildfires seemingly have been on the rise.
“As of today, the U.S. has seen eight separate billion-dollar (weather) events,” Bowen says. “This is one shy of the record nine separate billion-dollar events set in 2008.”
So far, Bowen says the Mississippi Valley flooding is about a $5 billion disaster, while the Joplin, Mo., tornado may end up being “one of the costliest single tornadoes ever recorded.” […]
Flooding on the Mississippi River has reached levels not seen since 1927, although flooding is hardly unexpected there. Tornadoes whipped the Southeast, killing hundreds in Alabama, Mississippi and other states, and blasted through the familiar Tornado Alley regions of of the lower Midwest and Plains. Twisters also whipped Massachusetts, where they are not unheard-of but usually arrive in the heat of summer if at all.
Much of this is attributed to the extremely strong La Nina in the South Pacific just off the coast of South America. Just as the hottest and wettest year on record, 2010 (by some observers), was attributed to, among other causes, an strong El Nino in 2009-2010 combined with the baseline effect of global warming.
Research suggests that the warming is also strongly linked to a temporary shift in Pacific currents, known as El Niño, which has caused the ocean to release large amounts of heat into the atmosphere.
Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, said: “We have seen rapid warming recently, but it is an example of natural variation that is associated with changes in the Pacific rather than climate change.
“However, this warming is in addition to the 0.7C long-term rise in global temperature caused by climate change. The record temperatures are due to the two factors adding together.”
I fear this is just the beginning of the kind of fearsome consequences of climate change that our children will inherit.
In the study to be published later this month in the journal Climate Change, Stanford University researchers conclude that many tropical regions in Africa, Asia and South America could see “the permanent emergence of unprecedented summer heat ” in the next two decades.
The middle latitudes of Europe, China and North America, including the United States, are likely to undergo extreme summer temperature shifts within 60 years, the researchers found.
“According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years,” said lead study researcher Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science and fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.
I wish you well Texans. I pray that you avoid anymore dangerous wildfires despite your severe drought, even if you cannot enjoy many of the traditional activities this Independence day holiday. I’d like to say that this will be the last time you will face such extreme and dangerous weather, but considering what the climate experts are telling us, that isn’t likely to be the case.
