San Francisco Frontiers - New York drought conditions fan flames, spur water saving

Since Friday, wildfires have burned through thousands of acres on the border between New York and New Jersey, just an hour from Manhattan, claiming the life of an 18-year-old firefighter battling the blazes.

On the New York side, officials said the fire was the largest on record since 2008, fueled by dry winds.

New York and other parts of the state north of the city are under a red flag warning for bush and forest fires with high winds, low humidity and dry conditions creating tinderbox conditions.

There was even a small fire over the weekend in New York's Prospect Park, a large green space in the city's densely populated Brooklyn borough, although it was quickly extinguished.

"The reality is, the drought that we're currently experiencing is just one example of how a changing climate is impacting our state today, not far off into the future, but right now," said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy.

New York City and the surrounding region have gone without significant rainfall for much of September and October, and November has been mostly dry so far.

- Perfect storm -

The drought-like conditions have coincided with a major overhaul of New York's water supply system, which has seen the city source more from a reservoir in Catskill Park, located in an area particularly affected by the dry conditions.

"While there is plenty of water in our reservoirs now, we are working to start public conservation efforts now in case this drought continues," the city's department of environmental protection said in a statement.

The city's fire department has called on residents to flag leaking fire hydrants so they can be closed, warning in an Instagram post that "an open hydrant can release more than 1,000 gallons per minute."

New York City's average daily water demand has decreased by approximately 35 percent in recent decades, but officials say more can be done to avoid waste, calling on residents to only flush toilets when necessary and to take shorter showers.

The reservoirs relied on by the city, which are usually filled by rainfall in October and November, are only 62 percent full -- far less than the normal level of about 79.2 percent.

The Office of Natural Lands Management said that the ground in parts of New Jersey was dry almost eight inches down -- the worst situation in more than 100 years -- meaning it would require that many inches of rainfall to bring the soil back to saturation.

There is no rainfall forecast in the area this week, and parts of New York have imposed a drought watch -- two steps below a drought emergency at which point homes and businesses are forced to restrict water use.

Drought-hit areas of New Jersey are already one notch above New York's, at the drought warning stage.

"The impact of this on wildfires cannot be overstated," said Greg McLaughlin, chief of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service, which has responded to 537 wildfires so far this year -- 500 more than in the same period last year.

Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said it had been over 20 years since a similar drought episode in the northeastern United States.

"One of the attributes that is starting to come out (with climate change) is these rapid transitions from either very wet periods to very dry periods, or very dry periods to very wet periods," he said.

D.Brown--SFF