Direct link to video from NBC10 Philadelphia on YouTube
I was not surprised when a friend of mine who is a wildland firefighter for the New Jersey Forest Fire Service (NJFFS) told me last night that the spring wildfire season in New Jersey has started earlier for the last couple of years as I had already posted about the wildfires over the weekend of March 1st and 2nd. My friend from the NJFFS was also concerned about the possibility of a very active spring wildfire season in New Jersey. One of the reasons I was not surprised is because of the ongoing drought conditions affecting most of New Jersey, see my graphic of the drought monitor on the right side of my blog for details. Anyway, the e-mail conversation with my friend from the NJFFS inspired me to write this post to point to the early start of the wildfire season in 2025 along with my concerns that the spring wildfire season may be worse. In the video that I embedded at the beginning of this article, you will hear that the wildfires that I wrote about on March 3rd were included in the approximately 50 wildfires of varying sizes, some very small, that broke out over last weekend. Furthermore, you will hear another official from the NJFFS say that so far this year there have been about four times as many wildfire since the beginning of 2025 compared with 2024. Remember that the fall drought contributed to a very busy 2024 fall wildfire season in New Jersey.
As a subscriber to the Courier News I had access to the North Jersey paper online, where I saw a nice but concerning article about the 2025 spring wildfire season in New Jersey. The article may be found here, and I am pretty certain that this article is freely available to you. This article says in part:
This busy start to the year comes after a very active fall wildfire season fueled by ongoing drought conditions.
"Everybody knows we were crazy in the fall. Coming off one of the busiest falls that I can recall, numbers were off the charts as far as our indices and things like that, and we took a little break over the winter," Donnelly said. "It gets dark, it gets cold, things like that, but we never really got the precip necessary to where we come into this year where things start out slow. We had a warm day Saturday, just as an example, and things went crazy."
Since Jan. 1, New Jersey has seen 215 fires with a total of 515.25 acres burned. During the same period last year, the state had 69 fires and 21.5 acres burned.
I am concerned that the stage is set for a busy and active spring wildfire season. I know that we are expecting some rain in New Jersey later today, but I don't know if it will be enough to end the drought and alleviate a possible active spring wildfire season. I urge all New Jersey residents, including but not limited to those of you living near a wildland to heed the advice given in the New Jersey Forest Fire Service's NJ Wildfire SMART page with a lot of good information about how you can keep your home safer from wildfires. I am paying attention to the information on this page because while I don't live near a larger wildland or forest, there are open spaces in the form of grasslands along with some wooded areas within a short distance of my house. Finally, while my focus here is on New Jersey, I am aware of the adjoining states of Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New York.
I thank the wildland firefighters of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service along with local fire companies who respond as a part of mutual aid for taking care to keep us safe from wildfires.
No comments:
Post a Comment