Brad Smith is looking at Texas’ wildfire forecast, and what he sees is not encouraging. Smith, the head of a Texas A&M Forest Service division that predicts fires, has one of the best handles on when and where one will strike in Texas. In the spring of 2017, Smith scoured available climate and weather data and determined that there was a good chance of a massive wildfire breaking out in the Texas Panhandle; he alerted firefighting personnel, then booked it from College Station to Amarillo to see if his prediction would come true. Unfortunately, it did. More than 1 million acres were engulfed in flames and seven people died. “It was really tragic,” Smith says.
In an interview this March, he pointed out a similarity between 2017 and 2021: Both years have been visited by La Niña, a weather phenomenon in which cool Pacific Ocean temperatures cause hot, dry weather in North America. Smith says La Niña years generally correspond with increased wildfire danger in Texas partly due to worse drought conditions. It’s not unlike the Santa Ana winds that drive the devastating wildfires that ravage California. In 2006, La Niña weather contributed to a wildfire in the Panhandle that destroyed 90 structures, forced mass evacuations, and killed 12 people. The weather pattern manifested again in 2011, spurring another big fire in Possum Kingdom and sparking a blaze in Bastrop that was the most destructive wildfire recorded in state history. La Niña tends to persist only through the winter months, Smith says, but this year it’s expected to last through spring.
