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Texas was hit by the second-largest wildfire in its history this week, as a series of blazes ripped across the state’s north-west, killed at least one person and temporarily shut the country’s top nuclear weapons facility.
The Smokehouse Creek fire, which broke out on Monday and had grown to cover 850,000 acres by Thursday morning, only ranks behind one outbreak on record in the state: the massive East Amarillo Complex fire in 2006, which scorched almost a million acres.
It was one of six wildfires that spread across northern Texas and neighbouring Oklahoma this week, driven by strong winds and unseasonably dry and warm conditions.
The number and intensity of fires across tropical South America have also been unusually high in February.
“Nearly everywhere in the world we’re seeing more extreme weather conditions conducive to fire,” said Stefan Doerr, director of Swansea University’s Centre for Wildfire Research.
These fires are becoming more difficult to contain due to a combination of high temperatures, high winds and low humidity for extended periods of the year.
The Texan fire was only 3 per cent contained on Thursday, with temperatures and winds expected to pick up at the weekend, making firefighters’ task more difficult. At least one victim was identified, the Associated Press news agency said.
Pantex, the country’s main centre for dismantling nuclear weapons, evacuated all non-essential personnel on Tuesday, as a blaze spread to the south of the plant. But by Wednesday morning staff had returned and the plant was operating as normal.
Climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of US wildfires in recent years. In the past half-century, three years have seen more than 10mn acres of land burnt, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Each of these — 2015, 2017 and 2020 — occurred in the past decade.
The US is on track to record its warmest winter on record this year, with snowfall well below normal levels in the north-east and midwest. Ice cover on the Great Lakes has fallen to a historic low.
A host of towns in the northernmost region of Texas, known as the Panhandle, issued evacuation and shelter in place orders. Videos posted on social media showed locals fleeing through smoke-clad highways and cattle stampeding from the blaze.
Tens of thousands of people were left without power on Wednesday, although most had this restored by Thursday, according to the data aggregator poweroutage.us.
At the same time, the latest scientific report said drought conditions had extended the peak fire season for wildfires in South America, including in the Amazon region, where fires normally peak in September and October.
Estimated carbon emissions from fires in Brazil, Venezuela and Bolivia during February were the highest recorded on the Copernicus fire monitoring database, which covers the period since 2003.
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