Wildfires raging this week in southern Georgia and northern Florida were fueled by a combination of hot and windy conditions, severe drought and dried-out vegetation from past hurricanes all feeding the blazes.It’s a combination climate scientists have been warning about for decades as the planet gets hotter.“This is not normal at all, but it is consistent with what we’ve been worried about with climate change,” said Kaitlyn Trudeau, a climate scientist at the nonprofit science research group Climate Central. “It all speaks to how dramatically we really are changing our climate.”AdvertisementAdvertisementThousands of acres are on fire across the two states, with one blaze in Atkinson, Georgia, already destroying around 90 homes since it broke out Monday.Multiple counties in both states have enacted burn bans — including the first burn bans in Georgia — and Gov. Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency Wednesday for 91 counties.Widespread drought in the Southeast is largely to blame for the fires, but their spread has also been fueled by leftover debris from past hurricanes that swept across the region — an issue that also has connections to climate change.In particular, Hurricane Helene in 2024, which made landfall as a Category 4 storm in Florida’s Big Bend region, left behind downed trees, branches and other vegetation ripe to burn.“The hurricane basically ripped up a bunch of trees and kind of just dropped them all in the area,” Trudeau said. “They sat out in the sun drying out, and the more oily trees can be super flammable when they dry out.”AdvertisementAdvertisementShe added that this kind of dried-out vegetation exacerbates the risk of wildfires, helping them grow and become more destructive when they do break out.Scientists have said that devastating wildfires will become more common in a warming world, and studies have shown that blazes will not only be more frequent, but also more destructive, as a result of climate change. The findings have enormous environmental, financial and health consequences for communiti …
