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 sooner, placing thousands and thousands of individuals and properties at higher danger.

“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 fireplace in Hawaii final yr, are particularly damaging, basically turning into unstoppable as a result of they transfer sooner than firefighters can…