Will El Niño Save the Western US from Wildfire Hell?

The great 2015 drought, which is really just a subcategory of the Great Forever Drought of the American West, extends clear through the theoretical rainforests of the Pacific Northwest. The southwestern US drought map looks like someone bled all over it, and the usually mossy cities of Seattle and Portland, which mostly managed to skip the winter rainy season altogether, wouldn't be that much better off if it weren't for a more ideal pre-existing water-to-need ratio. The West is brown and windy and hot.

We're fucked, but maybe not for too long.

As the most recent National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) outlook notes, El Niño conditions in the Pacific Ocean are rapidly strengthening. And, for southern California, the bloodiest wound on that drought map above, El Niño means precipitation—or it's correlated with increased precipitation, anyhow.

It couldn't come at a more opportune time. Things are getting desperate.

At this moment, approximately 17,305 acres of old-growth timber are burning in the San Bernardino Mountains courtesy of the San Gorgonio fire, which is still mostly uncontained and is being driven eastward toward civilization thanks to hot, unrelenting winds. The patches of wilderness in question haven't burned in decades and even in the best weather conditions they'd ripe for the cascading destruction of a major wildfire event. Actual weather conditions, however, are the some of the worst imaginable.

We're still somewhat early on in the wildfire season. In addition to the fires above, there are at current 21 uncontained large fires raging in the US, mostly in California. Monday's National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) Incident Management Situation Report notes 170 new fires (which is actually "light"), with seven of those categorized as large. The country's overall fire preparedness status is level 2, which means that while active fire activity isn't too extreme, conditions for wildfires to occur are both extreme and widespread.

On June 1, the NIFC released its latest fire forecast. Some recent rain has mostly confined regions of "above normal" fire potential to the usual southern California targets, but it's expected that by July, the fire-prone situation will have spread to the Northwest, northern Rockies, and the Great Basin, which is that big zone of salt flats and desert between Utah's Wasatch Mountains and California's Sierra Nevada. Fire conditions will also spread to somewhat less likely regions in Georgia and the Carolinas.

It will get worse before it gets better, but there's a good chance it will actually get better, at least in California. Eventually. Here's the key paragraph from the NIFC report:

There's a catch, however. Fire isn't just the product of extreme dryness, it takes a spark as well. Usually, this comes courtesy of human carelessness, but lightning is also a factor. As the report notes, the effects of an El Nino event may include an overall decrease in the number of monsoon season thunderstorms hitting California, but the proportion of dry storms (thunderstorms without rain) would increase. Dry storms are a classic firestarter.

The onset of cool, humid weather in southern California, as a strong El Nino event would imply, would be amazing. A wet El Nino winter and spring would be even better. Neither of these things are promised, however.

In any case, for many, it will be "too little, too late," according to the NOAA, and it's worth remembering that El Nino was dangled in front of us last summer too. If it materializes, however, it could be a remarkable unfucking.

The rest of the country doesn't stand to get the same relief, unfortunately. El Nino's correlation to seasonal weather patterns gets weak pretty fast, but it is suggestive of a warmer, drier winter in the Pacific-Northwest. Given that this past winter barely existed—with most basins reporting less than 25 percent of normal snow water equivalent and some reporting none at all—that spells deep trouble next summer.

For the rest of this summer, here's the NIFC's prediction for the Northwest:

So, there's still hope. But, speaking as someone in the thick of Cascade fire country, outside is still a whole lot of wind, dust, and brown vegetation.