How Science Is Fighting Wilder Wildfires Than Ever Before
Stuart Palley/Corbis At 6 a.m. on August 19, Julia Ruthford walks onto a makeshift stage in a tent city that’s sprung up in Chelan Falls Park, three hours east of Seattle. A hundred and fifty firefighters, wearing T-shirts ringed with dried sweat and smelling of smoke, wait to hear what the day will hold. Some chew tobacco. Some sip coffee from Styrofoam cups. A few hack dry coughs. The group is worn thin. For the past 22 days, many have worked 16-hour shifts fighting a group of wildfires outside Chelan, a 4,000-person town. As of that morning, 500 square miles of Washington are burning. “It’s another critical weather event,” Ruthford says into a microphone. A National Weather Service meteorologist, Ruthford’s responsible for a daily morning briefing, with a detailed forecast for the wildfires known as the Chelan complex. Smoke has socked...