Fox_Weather_News's Blog

Visitors to Yellowstone National Park may be seeing more than wildlife and changing leaves this week as the Arnica Fire continues to burn through the park's grounds.

Lightning started the blaze on September 13, but the fire was not discovered until September 23. Dry, warm and windy weather conditions have helped the fire jump from covering an area of 4 acres to 9,300 acres as of Tuesday, Sept. 29. Currently, the Arnica Fire is burning through an area of lodgepole pines, but officials are predicting snow and rain for Wednesday morning, which may help to subdue the fire.

Yellowstone has a fire lookout camera on Mt. Washburn, and the Wildfire Today Web site captured this image from it on September 24.

The Arnica Fire is one of eight active fires currently reported in the park grounds. Yellowstone is a fire-adapted ecosystem, which means fires can play an important role in maintaining the health of the area's wildlife and vegetation. The park follows a "Natural Fire Policy" and select fires will be allowed to burn unhindered if the areas will benefit ecologically from the blaze.

Last year marked the 20^th anniversary of the Yellowstone Fires of 1988, a time during which 51 fires burned 793,880 acres of park land. Following the fires of 1988, scientists began to discover that the mineral-rich ash led to greater plant growth and did not affect the populations of animals such as grizzly bears and elk. Forest fires can thin out trees, enabling more sunlight to filter through to the plants on the ground. It is also beneficial to allow some of the combustible material on the ground to be burned periodically, as having too much on the forest floor could cause fires to grow too large and out of control.

Lightning starts an average of 22 fires a year at Yellowstone. Most fires are not discovered until the heat of the afternoon when the smoke rising from the blaze becomes more easily visible to visitors and lookout cameras.

For updates on the Arnica Fire, see its InciWeb entry.

_ _ _

Brittany Stoner

Fox Weather Correspondent

Penn State University, Print Journalism and Spanish