Look West: Public lands and energy news from the Center for Western Priorities


** Expect more wildfires followed by heavy rains in the West
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Monday, April 4, 2022
Photo of 2021 fire in northeastern Alaska with a rainbow. @BLMFire ([link removed])

A new study ([link removed]) finds that as the impacts of human-caused climate change intensifies, 90% of extreme fire ([link removed]) events will be followed by at least three extraordinary downpours in the same location within five years.

This horrific one-two punch of natural disasters will hit the American West the hardest and most frequently. Heavy rainfall on recently burned areas could increase as much as eight-fold in the Pacific Northwest, double in California, and jump about 50% in Colorado by the year 2100 in a worst-case climate change ([link removed]) scenario of increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

The study authors say it's because even though the Western U.S. is getting drier overall and wildfire seasons are longer, incidents of concentrated bursts of heavy rainfall are becoming more frequent and occurring earlier, increasing the risk of both scenarios.

“One disaster is bad. Two disasters in rapid succession is even worse because you’re already reeling from the first one,” said ([link removed]) study co-author Samantha Stevenson, a climate scientist at the University of California Santa Barbara. “But in the particular case of wildfire plus extreme rain, the wildfire is setting you up for worse consequences because you’re losing your vegetation, you’re changing soil properties and making that landscape more conducive to destructive flooding.”

The study results hit close to home for co-author Daniel Swain, a western weather expert based at UCLA who lives in Colorado. Last week, he had to evacuate ([link removed]) his Boulder home because of a fire, which also happened to be the start of flash flood season. Swain said ([link removed]) , “It’s entirely foreseeable that some of these places will literally still have fires burning when the first extreme rainfall event extinguishes them.”
Quick hits


** Political wrangling delays release of U.N. climate report
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Washington Post ([link removed]) | E&E News ([link removed])


** Sacred land returned to Virginia's Rappahannock Tribe
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ABC News ([link removed]) | Washington Post ([link removed])


** The disastrous history of the Manitou Cliff Dwellings Museum and Preserve
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High Country News ([link removed])


** Study: one-two punch of wildfires followed by downpours to become more frequent in the West
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Associated Press ([link removed])


** Electric vehicle advocates urge Biden to seize the opportunity to move away from fossil fuels
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The Hill ([link removed])


** Feral pigs are biological time bombs—can California stop their exponential damage?
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Los Angeles Times ([link removed])


** Lottery permits for Zion National Park's Angels Landing hike "level the playing field"
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St. George News ([link removed])


** 15 underrated national parks to visit
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HuffPost ([link removed])
Quote of the day
” We need to be educating our base about these dystopian ideas and the scapegoating that's being put upon Black, Indigenous and people of color and working-class communities, such that they're able to identify these messages that may sound like they're environmental, but we need to be able to discern that they're actually very racist."
—Hop Hopkins ([link removed]) , director of organizational transformation at the Sierra Club
Picture this


** @SenMarkKelly ([link removed])
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Good news: My bill to make Chiricahua Monument a national park passed the Senate ([link removed]) ! This designation will boost tourism in southeastern Arizona and create more jobs in the region.

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