Portugal Fire Videos Show How Scary They Were

Wildfires menacing Braga, Portugal this week

The death toll from the wildfires in Portugal and Spain over the past couple of days has reached 36.

Between this fire and the ones in Portugal back in June, 99 people have died in wildfires in that country this year. Previously, the most fatalities from fire in a single year in Portugal was 25.  

It's been a bad year for wildfires in many parts of the world. Just ask people in northern California, where the death toll from fires this month is now at 41 and could still rise. And western Canada spent most of the summer on fire.

Here's the fire advancing on a bunch of people along a road in Portugal. I don't know how the guy with the big branch in his hand thought he was going to beat back the flames with it, but hope springs eternal, I guess:



Chaos and panic brought on by the fires in Galacia, Spain:



An amazing fire tornado in Portugal during the height of the fires. For scale, look for the person and the car to the left of the fire twister:

Ophelia, Wildfires Trash Europe, And A Word About Vermont Frost Tonight

A stadium damaged by Ophelia
today in Ireland.

I know frost during October in Vermont is not exactly unusual or a disaster, especially compared to the weather extremes and dangers in Europe most of this post will be about.

We're talking what was Hurricane Ophelia, now a powerful storm trashing Ireland. And we're talking scary, deadly wildfires in Portugal and Spain.

VERMONT FROST 

But, I'm based in Vermont, so I'll get our frost out of the way first: Although much of Vermont has already had frost this autumn, the Champlain Valley and a few other places have not. Which is pretty late in the month to go frost-free.

That will change tonight. A freeze warning is in effect for the Champlain Valley tonight, which means most of us will go below freezing. Anything that's still growing outside that you want to keep should either come inside, or you should try covering them up.

Even covering them might not totally be enough in many areas, especially away from the lake, since it will be so cold.

There are no frost warnings away from Lake Champlain because the growing season is considered done there. But some garden plants survived earlier cold weather elsewhere in Vermont, where temperatures will be in the 20s tonight.

Warmer weather returns for the rest of the week, but it won't be quite as toasty as the near-record mid and upper 70s we saw on Sunday.

OPHELIA

As I write this Monday morning, Ireland was being trashed by what was Hurricane Ophelia. It has finally lost its tropical characteristics but not its power. Ophelia had set a record over the weekend as the most north and east in the Atlantic a major hurricane has reached.

The peak of the storm in Ireland arrived at around mid-morning local time. There's already a report of a woman killed by a falling tree. About 120,000 people were without power and officials warned of coastal waves the height of a double decker bus.

Social media posts are showing roofs blowing off buildings, large waves crashing into shorelines and many, many trees down.

A 118 mph gust has already been reported at one coastal Irish location.

Ophelia was forecast to slam Northern Ireland, Scotland and parts of northern England this afternoon local time.

Ex-hurricanes that were full-fledged hurricanes just prior to hitting the British Isles are rare. The last time this happened was in 1961, when Hurricane Debbie, which had just transitioned from hurricane to powerful mid-latitude storm, killed 11 people in Ireland.

In another odd twist, Ophelia brought Saharan dust all the way north to Great Britain, so places where the sun was still out yesterday and this morning had an eerie red disc for a sun as all the dust in the air  caused this effect.

WILDFIRES IN PORTUGAL

Well east of Ophelia, southerly winds, partly associated with the storm, brought hot, dry conditions to Portugal and Spain, and wildfires on par with the recent ones in California resulted.

At least 30 people have died in the fires in Portugal and Spain, and the death toll is expected to rise. Record heat in the mid 80s to mid 90s contributed to the fires, as did strong winds on the outer fringes of Ophelia. The region also experienced an extremely hot, dry summer.

Sadly, it appears that most of the fires over the past couple of days were deliberately set, so some arsonists killed all these people and burned hundreds of homes and businesses.

Slightly cooler, somewhat wetter conditions are forecast over the next few days, which should help firefighting efforts.

This is the second major wildfire calamity in Portugal this year. June wildfires in that nation killed 64 people.

Deadly Portugal Forest Fire Largely A Man-Made Tragedy.

A huge forest fire in Portugal has killed at least 64 people

I'm sure most of you are horrified by the news out of Portugal last weekend, when a huge forest fire in the central part of that nation killed more than 60 people.

Lots of observers are saying that the disaster was at least in part man-made.

The Portugal forest fire hit during a spell of extremely hot, dry weather, the kind of conditions that climate change and global warming tend to encourage.

There's that, but an even bigger reason for the Portugal disaster has an even more direct line to what humans did.

As the BBC and many other media outlets note,  eucalyptus trees had a lot to do with this.

I'll let the BBC explain:

"Much of the area in flames is dominated by eucalyptus, an Australian species introduced to Europe in the 18th Century, but which really boomed in Portugal with the rise of the paper industries in the mid-20th Century.

It is one of the most profitable trees, but ecologists say eucalpytus sucks up rare groundwater and is bad for native plants and animal life. 

The sap-rich tree that now covers large parts of central and northern Portugal is also highly flammable

Eucalyptus lined route N-236, where 47 people died in their cars while trying to flee." 

On top of all that, a lot of forest in Portugal is privately owned, and much of it isn't managed well. Plenty of underbrush, dead branches and other fuels accumulated in the forests, and that contributed to the fire's intensity as well.

Worst of all, a person might have started the fire. Initially, it was thought that lightning struck a tree during a "dry thunderstorm" sparking the blaze.

But there are now reports that the forest fire was already going gang busters when the lightning struck. The thunderstorm winds might have fanned the flames, but an arsonist might have started the fire ahead of time..

We always hear of "natural disasters" as being "an act of God." and there's nothing we can do about it.

To an extent, that's true, as we can't prevent every storm, every drought, every heat wave, every hurricane, every tornado.

However, every disaster death toll is made worse by something we could have done better. Hindsight is always 20-20, but when people die in a weather calamity, it's always useful to figure out why people died and how we can prevent deaths the next time.

Because there's always a next time.