Some wildfires develop twice as quick as they did twenty years in the past

Wildfires within the western US aren’t solely rising greater. They’re additionally rising quicker, placing tens of millions of individuals and properties at larger threat.

“In the context of home destruction and lives lost, we really need to think more about fire speed than fire size,” says Jennifer Balch on the College of Colorado, Boulder.

Quickly spreading wildfires, such because the Camp Hearth in California in 2021 and the Lahaina hearth in Hawaii final 12 months, are particularly harmful, primarily changing into unstoppable as a result of they transfer quicker than firefighters can…