The unseasonably balmy weather throughout the Northeast in recent weeks, however pleasant, has stirred some of the driest drought conditions in recent memory, leaving New Jersey and Connecticut vulnerable to hundreds of wildfires.
In New Jersey, 377 wildfires have burned over 628 acres since Sept. 15, a jump from 26 wildfires with only about seven acres consumed over the same period last year. State authorities have not reported any injuries from the fires.
In Connecticut, where Gov. Ned Lamont has declared a state of emergency, there have been 84 wildfires since Oct. 21, an increase from five over the same period in 2023. The largest fire this fall, a 127-acre blaze about 15 miles south of Hartford, injured six people and killed one firefighter.
Human activity, whether accidental or intentional, causes 99 percent of wildfires in New Jersey, said a spokesman for the state’s Forest Fire Service. Officials in New Jersey are investigating whether any of the fires in the state were the result of arson; authorities in Connecticut did not immediately respond to a request for comment about what started its fires. A burn ban is in place for much of Connecticut and all of New Jersey.
“We have never experienced conditions like this,” said Bill Donnelly, chief of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service. “It’s so dry, the fires are burning down into the ground and are continuing to smoke.”
Having multiple wildfires in the Northeast might seem surprising for a region where rainfall averages are increasing and flooding poses a constant threat. But climate change can produce unpredictable weather patterns, said David Robinson, the New Jersey state climatologist and a geography professor at Rutgers University.
“Warm, dry episodes such as this are expected to become more common in a warming world, despite the fact that overall the region is supposed to get wetter,” he said.
In between periods of intense rain, which are becoming more common with climate change, drought-like conditions — the opposite extreme — can also occur. These abrupt shifts are on the rise because of global warming, which tends to supercharge typical atmospheric conditions, experts say.
In New York, which remains slightly less dry than neighboring New Jersey and Connecticut, wildfires are not as widespread as in the other states. Earlier this week, a New York forest ranger said there were nine blazes burning in the state spanning 75 acres.
Currently, all of Connecticut is considered abnormally dry, with the portion of the state regarded to be in a drought jumping to almost 14 percent of the state from about 2 percent earlier this week. All of New Jersey is in a drought, with more than half of the state classified as experiencing severe conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, which issues weekly reports and maps.
“It’s a tinderbox out there,” Dr. Robinson said.
Larger wildfires out west have prepared emergency workers in the Northeast with what to expect. In recent years, Connecticut fire crews have been deployed to fight blazes in areas ranging from California to provinces in Canada, said a spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection.
And last year in New Jersey, Gov. Philip D. Murphy gave $3 million to the Forest Fire Service so that it could update equipment and add employees, following an uptick in local wildfires and after much of the state was blanketed in a toxic haze from a fire out west.
New Jersey has been under a drought watch for two weeks. The Pine Barrens region, which makes up about a quarter of the state and contains forests, cranberry bogs and blueberry fields, is of particular concern for fire experts.
In this southern region of the state, homes are near or in the forest, Mr. Donnelly said, so access for emergency services can be a challenge. The U.S. Drought Monitor is likely to designate parts of the Pine Barrens as being in an extreme drought — the second-highest level in the organization’s ratings system — in the near future, Dr. Robinson, the state climatologist, said.
No appreciable rain, perhaps just a tenth of an inch in the coming days, is predicted for New Jersey anytime soon. A cold front toward the end of the week could lower humidity even further, which would — along with wind gusts of up to 35 miles per hour — threaten to increase the fire risk, according to the National Weather Service.
New Jersey’s Forest Fire Service measures moisture in the ground to assess fire risk. Earlier this week, state officials took a measurement that approached the most extreme drought conditions possible. “Nobody who is currently working for the Forest Fire Service has ever seen” conditions this dry, said James Douglas, a spokesman for the agency.
Mr. Donnelly said many of his firefighters were sleeping just two or three hours a night and were beginning to show signs of exhaustion. “It’s taken its toll,” he said.
The probability of rain in the next few days for New York and Connecticut is a bit higher, but precipitation is still unlikely.
New York City, where Central Park registered the driest month in 156 years this October, now has moderate drought conditions, according to the Drought Monitor.
These conditions extend to Westchester County, just north of the city, where New Yorkers are currently getting much of their drinking water.
“We are closely monitoring the potential effects of this historic stretch of dry weather on New York City’s water supply,” said Noah Levine, a spokesman for the mayor’s office.
Other parts of the country have experienced unusually dry weather as well. After Asheville, N.C., was hit with nearly 14 inches of rain during Hurricane Helene in late September, “it has been exceedingly dry,” Dr. Robinson said.
Dallas and Houston, which have recently experienced drought conditions, are projected to receive heavy downpours this weekend, said Bob Oravec, a meteorologist with the Weather Service.
These scenarios seem to underscore that a warming planet can bring with it opposing weather extremes in short order. The results can be fatal: This week in southern and eastern Spain, a region known for its sunny and dry climate, catastrophic flooding killed over 150 people. Some areas got a year’s worth of rain in one day.
Dr. Robinson remains optimistic about New Jersey and surrounding states, noting signs of a weather shift possibly a few weeks away.
“There is nothing to suggest this is going to continue in the months ahead,” he said.
Dr. Robinson explained that rainfall in the region tended to be evenly distributed throughout the year. “We could come out of this at any time,” he said, “although we just don’t want to come out of it in one fell swoop.”
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