Recalling Yellowstone National Park’s Historic 1988 Fire Season | National Parks Traveler

Recalling Yellowstone National Park’s Historic 1988 Fire Season | National Parks Traveler:

No one realized it at the time, but when a lightning strike ignited a single tree in Yellowstone National Park’s Lamar Valley 20 years ago, it was a dire harbinger of what would become a historic fire season in the park.
The resulting fire, baptized the “Rose Fire” in honor of a nearby creek, went out on its own after flickering briefly in June. Though it burned just that one tree, the fire was ominous nonetheless.
You could say that the 1988 fire season in Yellowstone was surprising in that it followed a spring that saw precipitation levels range 150-200 percent above normal. The problem, though, was that when May turned to June the precipitation abruptly left — it was almost as if Mom Nature twisted the garden spigot closed — leaving behind lush vegetation that quickly dried out and would soon serve as incredible kindling when the high, dry heat of summer in the Rocky Mountain West set in.

We visited Yellowstone a few years after the fires and were stunned by the damage. It’s been on our list for a couple of years to get back, but life hasn’t cooperated (yet).
But what struck me reading this is that this explains — almost exactly — what’s going on in California this year. Early wet winter, and then it stopped. And now the fires, which have been scary in their number and intensity. I remember watching the foothills around the bay area go golden, weeks earlier than usual, and thinking to myself “this is not good”.
Unfortunately, I was right. And it looks to me to be something that’ll get worse before it gets better this year.

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