By Tim Dickinson 15 September 2015 (Rolling Stone) – In May this year, the nearly unthinkable happened in the Pacific Northwest: The rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula, one of the wettest places on the continent, caught fire. By August, an inferno was stirring in the forests east of the Cascades. A wind-whipped blaze near the […]
20 September 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – Here’s an update to last month’s post on wildfire data from the Western United States. Data from the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center (Fuels and Fire Danger [pdf]) show that the area burned by wildfires in the Northwest is well above average, and a spike in the number of wildfires […]
By Katherine Purvis16 September 2015 (The Guardian) – Around the world, fresh water supplies are drying up: California in the US and São Paulo in Brazil are enduring historic droughts, groundwater sources have been plundered in south Asia, and globally more than 750 million people lack access to safe drinking water. The global fresh water […]
By Kathryn Hansen18 September 2015 (NASA) – At the end of summer 2015, the western United States continues to face a deep, ongoing drought. Conditions were particularly severe in California, Oregon, and Washington, where below-average precipitation has had a large, lasting effect on water supplies. The shortage is visible to satellites that detect the movement […]
4 September 2015 (Insurance Journal) – The monthly report for August from Aon Benfield’s Impact Forecasting catastrophe model development team cites the “severe drought conditions” in the western U.S. as resulting in “economic losses expected to reach at least $3.0 billion – mostly attributable to agricultural damage in California.” Several Caribbean and Central American nations […]
By Brian Skoloff and Kristin J. Bender 15 September 2015 MIDDLETOWN, California (Associated Press) – Some residents cried as they walked through the rubble of their homes while others shared amazing stories of survival as more people returned to their houses Tuesday and surveyed the twisted metal and smoking ruins left behind by a devastating […]
By Mareesa Nicosia13 September 2015 Five Points, California (The Atlantic) – It’s 7:50 on a hot, dry August morning when the buses rumble past a barren field— normally filled with broccoli this time of year — and creak to a stop in front of a flat-topped school, dust blooming up from under their wheels. Children […]
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Olga R. Rodriguez13 September 2015 MIDDLETOWN, California (Associated Press) – At least 100 homes were destroyed by a wildfire in Northern California’s Lake County that raced through dry brush and exploded in size within hours, officials said Sunday. The devastation comes after a separate wildfire to the southeast destroyed at least […]
By Olga Gertcyk11 September 2015 (The Siberian Times) – Buryatia has been hit in summer 2015 by the massive destruction of its pristine forests in a series of fast-spreading fires. Most shocking have been the scenes – pictured here – showing uncontrolled burning around Lake Baikal, the oldest and deepest lake in the world, containing […]
13 September 2015 (AP) – Within 12 hours of igniting, a wildfire burning north of San Francisco had swallowed up more than 60 square miles of land, injured four firefighters and burned highways and buildings, prompting an emergency declaration and forcing thousands to flee. The declaration frees up resources for the blaze, burning about 100 […]
