Last weekend, a very small wildfire broke out in a hilly and densely vegetated area of Prospect Park, a swath of green space in Brooklyn. The 2-acre blaze drew about 100 firefighters as residents were warned to stay out of the park. Meanwhile, on the New York-New Jersey border, another blaze, the Jennings Creek wildfire, has burned thousands of acres, sending smoke drifting across much of New York City and killing an 18-year-old New York state forest ranger volunteer who died while responding to the fire.
Is this typical? Not exactly. But the Northeast has been under severe drought conditions for weeks. These fires, and the dozens of others currently burning in the Northeast and across the Ohio River Valley, as well as the scores more in the western U.S., are the consequence of months of unseasonably hot and dry weather across large swaths of the country.
OK, pause: What is a drought? Simply put, a drought is a dry period — that is, a long stretch of time without any rain or snow — that leads to a water shortage. Droughts can (and do) happen all ove... Read more
