Wildfires

Wildfires – Oregon, USA

The Bootleg Fire, has grown to over 227 000 acres. The fire has drawn firefighters from all corners of the state and has put thousands of Klamath County households under evacuation. While temperatures around Western Oregon and Western Washington have fallen back between 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit in most places, southern Oregon is seeing triple-digit temperatures for an extended period.

Wildfires – Siberia

The city of Yakutsk, capital of Russia’s northeastern Yakutia region, has long been known as the coldest city on Earth. In winter, temperatures plummet to -40C, and it’s the only city to be built on permafrost. In July, temperatures are usually around 20C. But this year, record-breaking summer temperatures saw the mercury hit 35C in Yakutsk – in a heatwave that has fuelled wildfires in Siberia’s coniferous taiga forests.

Unlike wildfires that burn at lower latitudes, such as in California, which are often started by humans, Arctic wildfires are mostly started by lightning strikes. They are normally left to burn out unless they threaten human settlements. But Russian army planes have been sent to fight the fires that have raged across 800,000 hectares of forest in recent weeks.

Russia has the biggest area of tree cover in the world – at 882 million hectares. But it lost an area larger than Switzerland each year between 2011 and 2013 – mostly due to fires.

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