Boundary Waters wildfires could smolder until snow falls

You don’t just put out a forest fire.

Or at least, humans don’t. Once forest fires reach the scale of those burning in and around the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness — reaching temperatures of up to 1,500 degrees — the only fire extinguisher is Mother Nature.

And experts say Mother Nature might not be up to this task until the snow smothers the blazes.

“It’s way beyond the ability of firefighting crews to suppress,” said Lee Frelich, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Forest Ecology and an expert on the fire ecology of northern Minnesota forests. Frelich said the swaths of woods that are burning are mostly evergreen, specifically fir and spruce that form the backbone of the boreal forest.

They’ve been baked to a tinder by the dry heat wave, creating “just the right or just the wrong configuration, depending on your point of view,” he said. “Boreal conifer fuel types are among the most flammable in the world — and among the most intense when they burn," he said in a phone interview Tuesday. “So many tons of combustible fuel per acre ... a lot of boreal forest fires simply can’t be suppressed.”

The only thing that could put out the fires quickly would be a deluge.

https://www.startribune.com/boundary-waters-wildfires/601867991