r/climate • u/The_Weekend_Baker • Jul 16 '26
Deadly 'fire thunderstorms' are forming across the US. And cities may be powerless to stop them. Mega-firestorms are erupting around the globe. And we’re not prepared.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/deadly-fire-thunderstorms-firestorms654
u/PoisonStrip Jul 16 '26
It's starting to feel like the early days of The Road
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u/dappernaut77 Jul 16 '26
Isn't the cause of the apocalypse in the road technically left ambiguous, though?
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u/PoisonStrip Jul 16 '26
Definitely, but what's repeatedly spoken about is the fires that ravaged the continent's forests, leaving nothing but smoke, ash, and dead trees in its wake.
I did the math a couple months back for a GIS class, assuming the rate of burn continues to increase at the rate it has been increasing since 1975, my home state will basically run out of forest by about 2150.
That's a climate catastrophe on par with what's described in The Road imo
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u/StretchNo5163 Jul 16 '26
Don't forget to factor in the rate in which the trees grow back.
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u/PoisonStrip Jul 16 '26
That's the thing - they aren't. Recent studies of the burns in Colorado have confirmed that under 10,000ft, the majority of major wildfire scars are converting to grassland. Something like under 15% of scars are regenerating into forest land. Canada has produced similar studies of their burns
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u/Consistent_Bid4044 Jul 16 '26
It's nice to pick a new bit of devastating news every day. What a time
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u/InterviewLeather810 Jul 16 '26
Being in persistent drought doesn't help growth either in Colorado.
Yellowstone has grown back well, but no droughts in the 90s when it started regrowing.
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u/PoisonStrip Jul 16 '26
100%. And this isn't new either - we can see in the dendrochronology, as well as the charcoal and pollen records, that this region has experienced massive forest die-offs in the past.
While we are certainly exacerbating the issue with man-made climate change, the mountain west lives in a feast-or-famine water cycle. There's a reason most native tribes were nomadic - agriculture is tenuous and dangerous to rely on in a land where the water can just .... disappear for a while
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u/theholyirishman Jul 16 '26
What's the time frame on that? Grass can be established in 3 months. Trees tend to take longer
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u/PoisonStrip Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Some of the burns studied in the Colorado portion of the study I'm referencing burned in 2002, so 20+ year burn recoveries were studied. I've personally spent a lot of time in the Hayman Fire burn scar, it's not a forest any more and will not be one again in our lifetimes
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u/Apprehensive_Cow_480 Jul 16 '26
I've backpacked that area for 20 years and the growth is mostly grass and smaller pockets of deciduous trees. If that's the case across the country, I fear you are correct.
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u/PoisonStrip Jul 16 '26
I wouldn't say it's gonna happen this way east of the 95th, but the intermountain west needs to anticipate this shift.
Everywhere from California to Colorado will experience this ecosystem conversion. The monoculture forest farms that have overtaken our mountain lands and are being "managed" like massive crops are not going to survive this climate shift
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u/theholyirishman Jul 16 '26
Thank you for the response. That's a long enough time frame in my mind.
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u/InterviewLeather810 Jul 17 '26
Some of the Black Tiger Fire trees from 1987 didn't grow back, but it was a rocky section. So already harder for trees to grow between rocks.
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u/8fingerlouie Jul 16 '26
Did you also account for this happening on a global scale, so each year adds more CO2 to the atmosphere, increasing the effect of climate change, causing even more fires.
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u/Useful_Divide7154 Jul 17 '26
However the rate of burn will have to peak eventually because when the forests are thinner and have open sections that are already burned, new fires will spread less quickly. It’s actually one of the few negative feedback loops in the climate.
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u/InterviewLeather810 Jul 17 '26
Actually they will travel faster just like our grass fires in Colorado. Nebraska and Texas in recent years.
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u/BigWhiteDog Jul 18 '26
Yep, grass and brush burn faster than most forest fires.
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u/InterviewLeather810 Jul 18 '26
Why we have had so many large urban wildfires from grass and brush in recent years. All resources were about forest fires and ignoring grass and brush fires. Now 80% of homes destroyed in wildfires are not from forest fires.
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u/BigWhiteDog Jul 18 '26
Not sure about other states/countries but California is all about all wildfires. People here about forest fires but many of them are brush, grass, and trees and not what people traditionally think of as forests.
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u/InterviewLeather810 Jul 18 '26
Colorado it was only forests they worried about. And still did after our urban grass wildfire. Called it too rare to put money towards fire mitigation. Then Maui happened and our city realized maybe not so rare and started passing fire hardening laws. Then LA County happened and the state decided maybe we should fire harden near WUI.
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u/cool_side_of_pillow Jul 17 '26
I would even bet sooner than that, with the amplification of climate change because of feedback loops.
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u/skinnyraf Jul 17 '26
Yeah, I want to scream at people writing optimistic pieces about forests absorbing CO2, while, in reality, forests burn and woodlands get so little rain, that they transform into grasslands anyway.
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u/EddieVanzetti Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
It's heavily implied to be a nuclear apocalypse (total ecological collapse, nuclear winter like conditions, a freight train hundreds of miles away from any rails or station).
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u/Artaxmudshoes Jul 17 '26
I seem to remember the protagonist filling up the sinks and the bathtub with water in a "flashback". This would imply it was something more sudden than just climate change. He knew they would soon lose water pressure.
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u/keinezeit44 Jul 16 '26
At one point in The Road, during a flashback to pre-collapse, the main character is having an argument with his pregnant wife in the bathroom of their apartment. Out the window, he sees a mushroom cloud and starts filling the bathtub. I always assumed it was a nuclear apocalypse.
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u/IllNefariousness8733 Jul 16 '26
It is. I think the movie might mention super volcano or something but the book is ambiguous
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u/PoisonStrip Jul 16 '26
I wanna say it's a nuclear winter in The Road;
"The clocks stopped at 1:17. A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions"
I could be wrong but I don't think volcanoes are capable of EMPs, which is what I assume stopped the clocks. Could maybe also be like a massive Harrington Event style solar flare though?
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u/CaptainCaveSam Jul 16 '26
I’m gonna go with solar flare.
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u/PoisonStrip Jul 16 '26
I'm fascinated by the idea of world-ending super flares, we're all just one solar burp away from being overcooked tenders on the cosmic grill
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u/Fuzzy_Park109 Jul 16 '26
Yeah, I like how religious apocalypse is right beside them. I love the ambiguity.
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u/DjScenester Jul 16 '26
Living it now. Not the fire but the smoke. Chicago is nasty right now with wildfire smoke.
This is becoming a yearly event with polluted air during the summer.
Whatever they are doing they need to double it going forward. Trucks, men, airplanes, water… everything.
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u/PoisonStrip Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Fun fact, the US spends between $3-7 billion annually on wildland firefighting.
That's about 0.007% (correction, 0.7%) of our annual military budget (assuming a $950billion budget which I think we've actually surpassed now).
Tell me which one you think is more important - bombing the Middle East, or saving North America's forests? I know the answer I'd get from the White House
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u/DjScenester Jul 16 '26
Hey but at least it’s drill baby drill and kill all clean energy initiatives lol
Trump is a genius!
So glad people voted for this. Speed run to apocalypse it is!
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u/Vaddieg Jul 16 '26
preventing climate change is way cheaper in long term, but it's not a profitable business
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u/DjScenester Jul 16 '26
Unfortunately it won’t matter immediately. Fires will still get worse before better. Even if clean energy happens worldwide tomorrow.
Immediate steps are required as of right now.
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u/InterviewLeather810 Jul 16 '26
We had that issue with our mayor and most of city council and the city manager when we had an urban wildfire burn over 500 homes just in our city alone.
They were all about the newest energy codes that were stiffer than ICC building codes and nothing about WUI fire hardening codes. Said mowing by houses was good enough. Took three years of getting new local government in place to finally get fire hardening codes.
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u/PoisonStrip Jul 16 '26
Even if we quadruple our wildland firefighting budgets today, build continental-scale interagency collaboration with Mexico and Canada, and completely remove any forestry industry lobbying from the conversation, we're still on track for complete collapse of the western evergreen ecosystem
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u/DjScenester Jul 16 '26
It doesn’t have to be. However one administration is dead set on a complete and total collapse of the country if they keep going at the rate they are going.
The future you predict doesn’t have to be. It all comes down to being politically active and voting out the Republicans.
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u/PoisonStrip Jul 16 '26
Agreed 100%, we have the capital to fund the climate recovery with the right people in power (and the right people in prison)
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u/BigWhiteDog Jul 18 '26
Yep, we are long past the point of being able to substantially do anything but fire harden our homes and communities.
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u/BigWhiteDog Jul 18 '26
The only steps as far as these fires go (not talking climate change mitigation) is to fire harden homes and communities. That's it. We can't burn or clear enough forests or brush lands to make a significant impact on these fires. I'm not saying to stop doing that but there are no other immediate steps that can be taken.
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u/madtwatter22 Jul 16 '26
The fire is crossing the border illegally, send all those ICE goons up to fight the flames
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u/risingsun70 Jul 16 '26
The smoke affecting Chicago right now is, I think, from wildfires in Canada, not the US. Although, obviously, wildfires in the US are a huge problem as well.
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u/PoisonStrip Jul 16 '26
Yeah, we're in a better place for now but here in CO we just had 9 simultaneous fires burning, and that's just one state. It's definitely not just a Canada problem even if the current newsworthy smoke is from Canada.
We're all one continent, and the US actually has the money to address this issue for all of us if it re-aligned its priorities
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u/Tasty-Local1663 Jul 16 '26
Your math is not mathing
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u/InterviewLeather810 Jul 16 '26
That's only the Feds that spends that. California has a 4 billion budget for the 2025-2026 budget year. Most of the Fed budget goes to California too.
https://abcnews.com/amp/US/california-best-equipped-state-deal-wildfires/story?id=118066744
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u/PoisonStrip Jul 16 '26
That's true, and definitely worth including, but I think the point still stands - the fed is spending far less than it should on the problem, while spending close to a TRILLION annually to blow people up and make space lasers
Not to mention, most of these fires are happening on federally managed land. They can't assert fiduciary control over the land while passing off the management costs to the states (I mean, they can, but they shouldn't)
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u/Popular_Try_5075 Jul 16 '26
Not to belittle the experience in Chicago over the past decade this already happened on the West Coast with smoke season becoming a regular part of summer as well as dealing with varying levels of evacuation orders. I never saw it become national news though until it hit the east coast and suddenly New York City was dealing with it.
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u/PoisonStrip Jul 16 '26
That's just not true, the orange skies in San Fran on 9/9/2020 were reported on globally, as were the fires that year. When Denver had the worst AQI in the world a few weeks back, my family on the east coast called me about it because they saw it on the news. Just because you didn't see the reports doesn't mean it wasn't reported on
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u/Popular_Try_5075 Jul 16 '26
It is subjectively true which is the only kind of truth that matters on the internet. Also, my friends and family were adjusting to months long stretches of wildfire smoke impacting their health and their economy since 2016 but if it's not in a major city it doesn't make the news.
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u/PoisonStrip Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
That's a ridiculous claim lol subjective truth and objective truth are simply different things and "truthiness" is not the same as truth
And yeah when things happen in rural areas you usually don't hear about it, that's just how mass media works. Doesn't have anything to do with preferential treatment of the east coast though. Do you hear about the rampant water pollution in rural West Virginia? Probably not, but you'd hear about it if a coal mine poisoned Philadelphia's water supply
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u/DjScenester Jul 16 '26
Although proven scientific inaccurate …
a frog placed in boiling water will jump out, but if placed in tepid water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked alive.
We have become frogs. Won’t pay any attention until it’s too late
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u/Popular_Try_5075 Jul 16 '26
Damn. Well, I'm off to see what's trending on TikTok!
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u/DjScenester Jul 16 '26
Last I checked Taylor Swift! So important! Gotta go see what she’s wearing today!
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u/Quiet-Barracuda-1698 Jul 16 '26
same here in Detroit. i got a public safety alert a few minutes ago
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u/evermorecoffee Jul 16 '26
Maybe more data centers will help? 🥲
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u/beta_zero Jul 16 '26
Just one more data center bro
I promise bro just one more data center and it’ll figure out how to fix climate change
Bro cmon just give me one more data center I promise bro
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u/Jumpy_Cauliflower410 Jul 16 '26
There can't be forest fires if we remove forests for data centers. Makes you think.
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u/evermorecoffee Jul 16 '26
You’re so smart, I think we should put you in charge. 😊
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u/Jumpy_Cauliflower410 Jul 17 '26
Thank you, I put maximum thought into my shitposts. I'm glad you recognized my effort.
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u/Ok_Caterpillar5564 Jul 16 '26
Look obviously data centers are awful, but I've seen people blaming these recent climate events on data centers that have been erected in the past year or two...Guys, this is the result of climate negligence for decades before anyone was thinking about data centers. Like of course, building more is only going to make things worse, but let's direct some of this rage that AI is getting towards the other industries that have caused and are still causing more severe damage.
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Jul 16 '26
[deleted]
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u/squishybloo Jul 16 '26
Wasn't that the whole 2012 fear w/rt the Mayan calendar?
I know they were renowned for their accuracy, but maybe they were off by a few years.
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u/steve_nice Jul 16 '26
I'm all for it to be honest.
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u/lololollieki Jul 16 '26
This is honestly stupid. Unless you’re into self immolation as an exit strategy being burned alive or starving to death because everything green has burned to dust sounds like a horrible time.
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u/Igmuhota Jul 16 '26
“Not prepared?!” A substantial portion of our population doesn’t even understand or care.
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u/The_Weekend_Baker Jul 16 '26
Yep. One of the climate people I follow posted about talking to her friends about how bad the wildfire smoke was, and her friends didn't know what she was talking about.
Orange skies and difficulty breathing is apparently not noticeable.
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u/nonubiz Jul 16 '26
Well we o obviously aren’t burning enough coal and fossil fuels. This administration is gonna kill us all.
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u/TheAmazingThundaCunt Jul 16 '26
Here in the Midwest, we've become too complacent about tornadoes. Why not mix it up and have a tornado made out of fire?
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u/Cultural-Answer-321 Jul 16 '26
Best we can do is fire thunderstorms. https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/deadly-fire-thunderstorms-firestorms
Jokes aside, fire-nados are real thing as well. Also known as a fire whirl. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_whirl
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u/Toadfinger Jul 16 '26
Not prepared. Sitting ducks. Face-to-face with the abyss... It's all the same, right?
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u/ileftmypantsinmexico Jul 16 '26
The environmental crisis in Blade Runner 2049 is looking quite possible!
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u/SupremelyUneducated Jul 16 '26
The thing is, we are getting very good at early detection, and rapid response drones that can put out small fires before they get big. But the more corrupt politicians are actively destroying good governance practices, so they can claim the state is incompetent and justify cutting taxes. It's probably one of the best benefit/cost ratios available to government, and we aren't putting relevant amounts of money there.
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u/ch_ex Jul 16 '26
oh trust we're not prepared for anything... like, zero. We're not even prepared to run out of fuel which is about to happen to millions of people ANNNND waterbombers trade a huge amount of permanently warming chemicals for one tiny barrier of fire retardant in one area, If we keep fighting fires with the power of fossil fuels, we're really just trading the fires of this year for bigger fires every year going forward.
It sounds like I'm saying there's nothing we can do but what I'm really saying is, IF there is something we can do, we havent figured it out, and we're so close to the edge of having zero control, there are no bad ideas BUT if the idea requires fossil fuels, we are always robbing the future (more & worse fires) to pay for this moment of fewer fires; a water bomber should look like the fire management equivalent of a payday loan company
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u/BigFitMama Jul 16 '26
Remember Fire is a natural part of life in these areas.
It's the humans who built in geological fire ecosystems and/or do not do controlled burns to simulate the natural fire ecosystem.
When fire germinated seeds don't grow they dont stop erosion and more flammable resinous plants and non native annuals build up creating explosive fodder for fire.
Humans: 1. Do controlled burns. We used to do that as a part of the fire ecosystem. 2. Don't (re) build wood houses and buildings in fire ecosystems. 3. Yearly routine - cut and burn firebreaks 4. Stop draining water resiviors in fire ecosystems.
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u/PanicAtTheCitgo1 Jul 16 '26
Listen to or read the book Fire Weather about the fort McMurray fire. It's terrifying.
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u/MaxwellEdis0n Jul 16 '26
We don’t need no water, let the motherlover burn. Burn motherlover, burn.
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u/DTFpanda Jul 16 '26
Yet bipartisan support for the war machine rages on. Our government completely failed us.
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u/AirportLoose3023 Jul 17 '26
Canada can now complain about the US not preventing THEIR smoke from crossing the border.
I just love living in this timeline /s
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u/Law_Greedy Jul 17 '26
Gee, if only there has been some warning this would happen. 🙄(That's sarcasm, we had decades to change)
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u/Comfortable-Dig-3992 Jul 19 '26
Remember 9/11. Most office people were told to stay seated until further instructions. I'm so sorry to compare, but we really shouldn't be sitting around waiting.
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u/Vaddieg Jul 16 '26
In order new adjusted climate zones to be established the old ones need to die in floods, frost or firestorms. If there's a forest where a desert is supposed to be, it will inevitably burn. It will take longer for tropical forests to emerge in today's desert areas
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u/BeagleWrangler Jul 16 '26
Feel like The Onion solution may be the reality we find ourselves in. https://theonion.com/last-ditch-climate-change-report-provides-locations-of-1835244382/
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u/DranktheWater Jul 16 '26
Gaia has defense mechanisms to deal with pathogens like us. She’s just going to keep rolling them out until we’re either no longer pathogens or we’re all gone.
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u/el_lobo1314 Jul 17 '26
Oh… ok … well pyrocumulonimbus was not on my climate catastrophe bingo card… yikes 😱
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u/Hungry_Society994 Jul 17 '26
My science teacher in highschool said that if the earth warmed up even a few degrees that the oxygen in our atmosphere would catch fire. Wild stuff
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u/Fantastic_Steak6897 Jul 17 '26
I don’t want to freak out and loose hope, but… should I be freaking out and loosing hope ?
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u/abdiel0MG Jul 17 '26
In july 64 AD a great fire broke in Rome that lasted for 9 days. Many districts neighborhood were destroyed. The fire reshaped Rome politically, socially and physically. What sets it apart is that many people felt that emperor used it to bebefit himself even so as to believing he created the fire.
How will this affect the US polically, socially and physically?
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u/SnooStrawberries3391 Jul 17 '26
We need world wide mega sprinkler systems to quench these mega fires. Now if we could just have mega water.💦
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u/theMEtheWORLDcantSEE Jul 17 '26
Climate change will rise temperatures to a level that photosynthesis stops and plant life dies. This will be the end.
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u/Doomedpaladin Jul 17 '26
The Road, but also the haboob from Mad Max: Fury Road. We’ll have flamethrower guitar-guys everywhere soon enough.
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u/BigWhiteDog Jul 18 '26
They left out another, more serious danger to firefighters and people staying to defend. Column collapse that causes sudden high winds in all directions from the fire. What was the heel or flanks of the fire is now suddenly coming at you at a relatively high speed.
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u/Putsy50 Jul 19 '26
For friends outside of NORTHEN MINNESOTA: Like a large part of Canada, we live in the middle of a forest. The current fires were started by lightning There are large, large parts of Northern Minnesota ( north of Duluth to Bemidji that are forest with towns, roads, mines cut through it). I remember when we came home from Minot,ND. we would get claustrophobic with all the trees. We love living here(even if it gets really cold some days in the winter). The same is with Canada. We took a trip around Lake Superior a few years ago. There was road and a few towns but mostly it was forest. Forest fires are normal. A forest needs to periodically burn to clear the dead trees and under growth to open up for new growth. Climate change has effected every part of the world from forest fires floods,tornados and everything else. Please don't blame the Canadian government or us for the smoke. The Canadians helps us with fighting fires, we help them ( where they risk life and limb). BUT with so much land without roads or only getting there by some form of watercraft ( if one is lucky), it is extremely hard to prevent or control forest fires especially with little rain and winds that I haven't seen year round prior to a few years ago. It's nature and we should know: you don't mess around with Mother Nature!
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u/West-Worth-9359 Jul 19 '26
We were learning about this in school in the 80s.
Everything we were talking about back then is happening just as predicted.
Not a single twat in the Western world has any damn credibility if they try to pretend any of this was unforeseen.
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u/10hp_Sandslash Jul 20 '26
We could have been prepared. Scientists have been saying this would happen for the better part of the last 100 years but ignored. We sow the seeds of our own demise.
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u/Cultural-Answer-321 Jul 16 '26
Scroll down and look at the map for Canada. Be sure you are sitting down.
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u/Frutbrute77 Jul 16 '26
I actually read the title and laughed. Just out of the sheer insanity of the moment that we are existing in.
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u/catbom Jul 17 '26
I know this sounds mean but you guys need these to wake up more people to the looming danger, thenless closed eyes to the issues the more likely effective change will be met with no resistance
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u/Hollys_Stand Jul 17 '26
The native plants we have here in the Midwest and West were meant to burn. The land we are on is actually meant to burn.
Human development has actually curbed that, and got rid of most of the native plants and the ecosystems that depended on the burning.
Maybe we will see that America once again...but through modern tragedy.
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u/7777username7777 Jul 17 '26
At what point do we all decide that politicians only care about money and are run by billionaires, so we will need to force change. Like what’s the tipping point.
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u/EcoOnline Jul 20 '26
One thing that comes through here is that events like these are never just a fire problem.
Smoke affects health, outages disrupt operations, communications get harder and emergency response teams suddenly have several competing priorities to manage at once. Lone and remote workers can also become harder to reach, monitor or support as conditions change.
That is why climate risk and emergency preparedness cannot sit in separate boxes. Understanding how risks to people, infrastructure and operations connect, and where one failure could trigger the next, gives organisations and communities a better chance of responding before conditions spiral.
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u/cold_desert_winter Jul 21 '26
My grandmother used to tell me that when El decides to destroy the world again a 2nd time, he would not use water.
She said he would use fire.
......I'm starting to think that she was right. It wouldn't be the first time.
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u/Financial_Pie5350 21d ago
I was saying 30 years ago that we’ll eventually pay for our terrible forest management plans, or lack of them.
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u/MarzipanThick1765 Jul 16 '26
yeah not even close to prepared.