Full Circle: Record Heat Powers 29,000-Acre Florida Fire In Forests Killed By Hurricane Michael

[hatrack]

Link to tweet

Three sweeping wildfires that started last week in the Florida Panhandle have burned more than 29,000 acres and are threatening surrounding communities amid dry and windy weather, the authorities said Tuesday. The blazes, which are collectively called the Chipola Complex, are being fed by dead trees and other vegetation left by Hurricane Michael in 2018, fire officials said.

“This is a living, breathing beast,” Brad Monroe, the chief of emergency services in Bay County, said Tuesday during a news conference. “When it produces its own weather, you see lightning strikes within a fire on a bright sunny day, it’s incredible. Words cannot describe it.”

The largest blaze in the Chipola Complex, the Bertha Swamp Road fire, was more than 28,000 acres in size and was 10 percent contained, according to a Tuesday evening news release from the Florida Forest Service. The fire is centered about 60 miles west of Tallahassee.

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Link to tweet

The impact of Hurricane Michael on longleaf pine habitats in Florida – Nature May 21, 2020:

Global biodiversity hotspots (GBHs) are increasingly vulnerable to human stressors such as anthropogenic climate change, which will alter the ecology of these habitats, even where protected. The longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) ecosystem (LPE) of the North American Coastal Plain is a GBH where disturbances are integral for ecosystem maintenance. However, stronger storms due to climate change may be outside their historical norm. In this study, we estimate the extent of Florida LPE that was directly affected by Hurricane Michael in 2018, an unprecedented Category 5 storm. We then leveraged a unique data set in a Before-After study of four sites within this region. We used variable-area transects and generalized linear mixed-effects models to estimate tree densities and logistic regression to estimate mortality by size class. We found at least 28% of the global total remaining extent of LPE was affected in Florida alone. Mortality was highest in medium sized trees (30–45 cm dbh) and ranged from 4.6–15.4% at sites further from the storm center, but increased to 87.8% near the storm center. As the frequency and intensity of extreme events increases, management plans to mitigate climate change need to account for large-scale stochastic mortality events to preserve critical habitats.

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https://climatecrocks.com/2022/03/09/florida-feedback-effect-in-panhandle-fires-complete-the-climates-vicious-cycle/

[Chainfire]

1. I live in the area. We started getting rains yesterday that are forecast to

go through the weekend. Hopefully it will tamp this fire down. However, when this one is done, there are still millions of tons of downed trees stacked like pickup sticks on a 50 mile swath from Panama City (current fires) to the Georgia State line, and beyond.

I live on a 30 acre wooded lot of natural growth trees. By the Forestry Service estimates, I lost 2/3 of my mature trees. Perhaps worse then the ones on the ground are the very large pines that lost their tops and still stand waiting to become candles, spreading embers for miles... The downed trees lay where they fell because the expense to remove them is not within my reach. I did pay to push the woods back another 50 yards from my house, and I hope that that will give me a safe buffer for when the fires come.

For my neighbors to the West, they took a huge beating in the hurricane, many places still have tarps on their roofs after three years. For them to now face fires is pitiful. This is not the part of Florida with skyscrapers on the beach, this is a rural, economically depressed area. The county most affected the hurricane and now the fires has a median income of under $24,000.00. You can imagine in a Red State, with a DeSantis for governor, we are at the end of the line for any kinds of services. This part of Florida does not really exist in the hearts and minds of the major metropolitan areas.

[Phoenix61]

2. Howdy neighbor,

DeSatan doesn’t care because the entire area is hard core red. Although, he sure has been hanging around PC a lot. I can only imagine what evil little plan he’s hatching for the area.

[Chainfire]

3. How close neighbor? Gadsden here.

[Phoenix61]

4. Bay County. nt