When looking outside at Moscow in the winter, students and residents usually expect one thing: snow. In years past, ice has covered every sidewalk on campus. Snow had piled high on the sides of roads and parking. This year, instead of that, we had a mostly mild winter with warmer temperatures than usual.
While some may be happy they didn’t experience the harshness of a Moscow winter, others know that a snow drought can lead to one thing: wildfires.
NBC news reported on several states in the west that were at risk for severe wildfires this summer. The “fire season” varies but is typically from June to September.
Noah Molotch, a professor of geography at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been studying the western drought.
Molotch stated that everywhere is facing a “pretty severe snow drought.”
The reason the fire risk is so high is because less snow allows vegetation to bloom and dry out longer.
“Intense fire weather is not necessarily in short supply these days,” Molotch said. “It’s pretty clear that these kinds of snow drought conditions set us up for potentially very intense wildfire seasons.”
While the correlation has not been proven, many think that climate change is the cause, especially because it causes warmer temperatures and can lead to droughts.
Russ Schumacher, director of the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University and the state climatologist, looked at the effects of climate change.
“Precipitation deficits are harder to attribute to climate change, but in terms of really extreme high temperatures, there’s a clear connection with the planet warming,” Schumacher said.
While this winter could have been a temporary blip, if it was the result of climate change, this can be a reality for many years to come. With extreme warming temperatures, the threat of severe fires and droughts can stay in the Pacific Northwest.
“We’re sitting here in early March and there’s not that much time left for things to turn around, unfortunately,” Schumacher said. “The hope now is that instead of it being a historically bad year, it ends up going down as just a bad year.”
For now, all we can do is hope that this winter will serve as a reminder that climate change is seriously affecting the global climate and we have no idea what next winter, or even winters ten years from now will look like.
Andrea Roberts can be reached at [email protected].