More and bigger wildfires for Arizona

 A new study of historical wildfires in the western U.S. shows a frightening trend.  Reuters report,  "The average annual number of fires that cover more than 1,000 acres has nearly quadrupled in Arizona and Idaho and doubled in California, Colorado and six other Western states since 1970," according to analysis by Climate Central.


"The report, which analyzed 42 years of records about fires on U.S. Forest Service lands in 11 Western states, linked rising spring and summer temperatures in the region to a fire season that begins earlier, ends later and sparks larger, more frequent blazes. Those include so-called megafires, or blazes that raze upward of 10,000 acres. Those fires erupted at a rate seven times greater each year in the past decade in the western United States than in an average year in the 1970s, according to the report."