Wildfires are becoming night owls — and that’s a big problem

Wildfires are no longer quieting down overnight, and new research suggests the dynamic is fueling some of the most extreme and damaging blazes. 

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For firefighters, “historically, it’s always been nice to catch your breath at night and know the fire is not going to do anything,” said Mike Flannigan, an author of the study who is a professor of wildland fire at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, Canada. 

Today, that’s no longer the case.

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Flannigan and his colleagues used satellite image data to examine more than 23,500 fires from 2017-2020. Satellites captured several images of these fires each hour. If the researchers could detect a hot spot in these fires once an hour over a 24-hour period, they classified that fire as an “overnight burning event.”

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