Alaska on Fire

While the western half of the contiguous United States is used to seasonal wildfires, you may not think it's something that Alaskans have to deal with. You would be wrong. Alaska's typical wildfire season starts around April 1st and ends at the end of August. 

Although Alaska was fortunate enough to have an extremely mild fire season this year, that has not always been the case. In 2004, about 6.6 million acres of land burned from 701 wildfires in the state. Last year, fires burned over 2.5 million acres. It was considered an "extreme" fire season.

Experts say the fire season has been ramping up in recent years and global warming is evidently the culprit again. It's been estimated that Alaska is warming up at about 2.5 times faster than the rest of the lower 48 states.

Thankfully Alaska's fire season was very mild for 2020 and is not likely to produce many fires in the little time that this year has left. 

Picture: Smoke from a fire on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska in 2019

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