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Apr 23, 2013

Rough Wildfire Season Ahead for West With Building Drought

This article was provided by AccuWeather.com. While wildfires are inevitable in the West during the summer, this year the season has the potential to be worse than average. Drought, which began last summer, become significantly worse over many areas of the West this winter. The drought is showing few signs...

May 3, 2013

California Springs Fire Grows 10,000 Acres in 24 Hours

This article was provided by AccuWeather.com. A quickly spreading wildfire, called the Springs Fire, started burning in Ventura County, Calif., on Thursday morning. According to the Ventura County Fire Department, it has forced hundreds of evacuations. As of 8:30 a.m. PDT Friday, the fire was estimated at 10,000 acres, and...

May 3, 2013

California Blaze Makes its Way to Ocean

A massive fire in Ventura County, Calif., that started early Thursday (May 2) has gobbled up thousands of acres of brush and is headed toward the ocean near Malibu. The blaze erupted at about 6:30 a.m. local time (9:30 a.m. EDT) Thursday off the Southbound 101 freeway, threatening hundreds of...

Jun 3, 2013

Southern California Wildfire Triples in Size

This article was provided by AccuWeather.com. Firefighters in Southern California continue to battle the massive Powerhouse Wildfire that more than tripled in size from Saturday night to Sunday. The Powerhouse Wildfire has burned 19,500 acres as of midday Sunday, according to the Incident Information System. The fire has more than...

Jun 14, 2013

Massive Thunderstorms Are Traced to Intense Wildfires

Wildfires ravage the Earth's surface, but they also disrupt the atmosphere, creating monstrous thunderstorms that occur surprisingly frequently, according to new research unveiled Monday at this year's meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Brazil. Fire-caused thunderstorms, called pyrocumulonimbus storms — pyrocbs (pronounced PIE-row SEE-BEEs), for short — can inject...

Jun 17, 2013

Black Forest Fire: Most Destructive in Colorado History

This article was provided by AccuWeather.com. The Black Forest fire is now the most destructive fire in Colorado history. The fire is becoming increasingly contained by firefighters, and the weather looks to largely cooperate this upcoming week. 473 homes have been destroyed as of Saturday morning making it the most...

Jul 3, 2013

Burning Question: How Will Climate Change Impact Western Wildfires?

Climate change will dramatically alter wildfire patterns in the western United States before the century ends, studies show. Experts are reluctant to paint a broad picture of future fire risk because fires vary so drastically among regions — a forest fire in high-elevation Colorado, for example, is vastly different than...

Jul 22, 2013

Subarctic Wildfire Activity Is Heating Up

Subarctic wildfire frequency is higher now than it has been at any other point in the last 10,000 years, new records show. The records, obtained from charcoal in the Yukon Flats of Alaska, have revealed the history of wildfire activity in the region known as the subarctic, the area just...

Jul 31, 2013

Big Wildfires in the West: Why, How, What To Do?

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation. Barely halfway into the summer of 2013, this year's wildfire season is already a record breaker. The Yarnell Hill wildfire, which started on June 28, was the deadliest fire in Arizona's history, killing 19...

Aug 9, 2013

Watching Wildfires from Space, NASA Sees Average Year

Though Alaska and California saw an early start to their annual wildfire seasons this year, with major burns flaring up in May, experts said today that fire activity has been average so far in 2013. If you go back over the last 30 or 40 years in the U.S., you...

Aug 26, 2013

Astronaut Snaps Photo of Raging California Wildfire

A wildfire raging in Northern California can be seen from space. NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg snapped a photo of the blaze from her post aboard the International Space Station on Saturday (Aug. 24). Our orbit took us directly over California's Rim Fire about an hour ago Devastating August 26, Nyberg...

Aug 28, 2013

NASA Satellites Track California's Rim Wildfire from Space

NASA satellites in orbit high above the surface of the Earth are keeping close tabs on the massive wildfire currently raging in California. The California Rim Fire was previously spotted from space by NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg on the International Space Station, but new images beamed down to Earth from...

Aug 30, 2013

Wildfire Fallout: Yosemite Pining for Visitors This Labor Day Weekend

Labor Day weekend in Yosemite National Park usually means hotels and campsites jammed with visitors, many of whom snagged reservations five months or more in advance. But on Friday morning (Aug. 30), vacancies could be found at the most sought-after sites in Yosemite Valley. Concerns about smoke and road closures...

Sep 2, 2013

Rim Fire Endangers Experimental Forest

This article was provided by AccuWeather.com. As the California Rim Fire near Yosemite National Park continues to burn, becoming one of the state's largest fires in California history, it is coming dangerously close to sending years of research at the Stanislaus-Tuolumne Experimental Forest up in flames. Located in the central...

Sep 3, 2013

Incredible Technology: How to Fight Wildfires

Editor's Note: In this weekly series, LiveScience explores how technology drives scientific exploration and discovery. Wildfires, like the Rim Fire raging in Yosemite, Calif., are some of nature's most awesome, and devastating, spectacles, devouring large swaths of forest and grassland in hours. Battling such blazes requires firefighters to pair traditional...