What is a “Flash Drought” and how does it explain the current Carolina Wildfires? Board Member Lauren Lowman, Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering, and Nick Corak, a Ph.D. Candidate in Physics at Wake Forest University, shared a helpful explainer in The Conversation on the “weather whiplash” fueling recent wildfires from the North Carolina mountains to the South Carolina coasts.
Flash droughts are extreme droughts that develop rapidly due to lack of precipitation and dry conditions in the atmosphere. When the atmosphere is dry, it pulls water from the vegetation and soils, causing the surface to dry out.
Despite the extensive flooding caused by Tropical Storm Debby and Hurricane Helene in late summer and early fall, the abnormally dry winter months that followed left the landscape in a “flash drought” state, making it extremely vulnerable to the wildfires we’ve seen this month.
Unfortunately, this type of weather whiplash is predicted to increase in the Southeast, as rising temperatures allow our atmosphere to hold more moisture, a dynamic which increases the amount of water drawn from the land (leading to drought) and of course increases the amount of water the atmosphere can then drop back into the landscape (leading to flash floods).
Learn more about the interplay between climate change, flash droughts, and wildfires, as well as the role of forest management in helping to mitigate these risks, in their informative piece in The Conversation.