As drought pushes east, more intense wildfires are sparking in new areas
(CNN) -- Only a few months into 2022 and it's already a dreadful year for wildfires. More than 14,781 separate wildfires have scorched over half a million acres as of this week, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, the largest number of fires year-to-date the agency has recorded in the past decade.
But many of these recent fires haven't been igniting in California or the Pacific Northwest - which have endured several devastating fire seasons in a row - they've been popping up in places like Colorado and Texas, and have burned hundreds of thousands of acres in the past few weeks alone.
Earlier in March, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted drought conditions would expand eastward this spring and worsen in some locations - conditions that are now priming the landscape in the Southern Plains for dangerous, fast-moving fires.
"So while the spring outlook for this year from NOAA looks quite similar to last year, there is a key difference about this spring, which is that the drought has expanded eastward, pushing 70% of Texas -- which was less impacted over the last two years -- into severe drought," Justin Mankin, assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth College and co-lead of NOAA's Drought Task Force, told CNN.
Texas has been besieged by wildfires over the past few weeks as severe drought took hold. More than 700 fires scorched around 164,000 acres in the state this month, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. A new blaze erupted near Fort Hood on Sunday that has since burned more than 33,000 acres, the forest service said.
