Spring Can Be Fire Season; Huge Wildfire Disasters In South Korea, China

Wildfires burn this past week among buildings in northeastern South
Korea. Photo by Gangwon Lobo, Getty Images.

When I got up at my house in St. Albans, Vermont this morning, it was dank and damp out. There was a slushy coating of melting snow on the ground from last night. There was a bit of fog, and water dripped from the trees.

Not exactly the kind of weather that would be conducive to brush fires. But this is the time of year they can happen.  Mostly in areas where it is early spring, and things haven't really greened up yet.

Here in Vermont, it will generally be too damp over the next several days at least to worry much about brush fires.

Plus, this time of year has a reputation of being too soggy to allow for brush fires. But with last year's vegetation all dried out and things yet to green up, a few dry days would boost the risk. It wouldn't take long for things to dry out, either, if the weather cooperated.

This time of year is the peak season for brush fires in Vermont, believe it or not. We do get extended periods of damp weather in April - April showers bring May flowers after all. However, we also often have weather patterns in which very dry, sunny high pressure areas drift down from Canada and stall in our area. That creates several days in a row in which moisture can quickly evaporate.

The sun is strong, and there's no leaves on the trees to stop that drying sun to penetrate the forest floor. There was a fire risk the other during dry, windy weather, so it can happen.  It's just not in our immediate future.

There was absolutely no fire danger this morning in this brushy area behind
my St. Albans, Vermont house this morning, what with the slushy covering
from an overnight snow and a foggy, drizzly atmosphere. But this same
area can dry out within a couple days this time of year. Obviously, I do
my brush pile burns in the winter, when there's deep snow on the
ground, and not during fire-prone April.

It's happening elsewhere, though, as other areas of the Northern Hemisphere are waiting for the spring green up.

Springtime wildfires turned into a major disaster in South Korea this week, when strong winds and dry weather whipped up wildfires in that country's Gangwon Province. The fires destroyed hundreds of homes and killed at least two people. 

Springtime wild and brush fires do pop up almost yearly in this region of northeastern South Korea, but they normally stay in the mountains and don't get this big. This one was the worst in decades, hopscotching from town to town. This is the region that hosted the Winter Olympics last year, and the fires burned through neighborhoods and between high rise buildings and commercial tracts.

Most of the fires had been largely contained as of Friday.

An even worse wildfire this past week in China killed at least 30 people, most of them firefighters battling the blaze in Sichuan province at elevations as high as 12,000 feet. That elevation, and the extremely steep slopes where the fires were burning had to be challenging to say the least.

Back here in the United States, Vermont pretty much escaped having any wildfires this past week, although one was reported around Hartford, near White River Junction. The only regions of the state that could have had them were the Champlain and lower Connecticut River valleys. Other areas of the state were still snow covered, so no fires there. Yet. Wait until the snow melts.

There were forest and brush fires, though in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Massachusetts. There were no injuries and damage to buildings was very minimal or nonexistent. But the fires prove you can get them around here this time of year.

As noted, there's no particularly dry weather in our immediate future. But if we have a stretch of warm, sunny weather late this month or in the first half of May, be careful. I can't imagine we'd get anything as bad locally as there was in South Korea, but these fires can cause some real damage.

No outdoor burning, please, and don't be an idiot and throw your cigarette butt out the car window.

Here's a video of the Korean fires: