In New Mexico, the massive Calf Canyon-Hermits Peaks Fire is now officially the state’s largest recorded wildfire in modern history, eclipsing the 297,845 acre Whitewater-Baldy Fire Complex of 2012. On Monday morning fire officials listed Calf Canyon-Hermits peak at 298,060 acres. Fanned by erratic and unpredictable winds and growing by more than 90,000 acres in the past week, Calf Canyon-Hermits Peak fire has already burned more acres than burned last year in all of New Mexico. Spring is historically a busy time for wildfires in the Southwest, before the summer monsoons arrive around the Fourth of July, if they do. But this year, as in recent ones, large fires began igniting in the region at least a month early due to an extended drought made worse by human-caused climate change. The drought that has enveloped southwestern North America for the past 22 years is the region’s driest ‘megadrought’ defined as a drought lasting two decades or longer, since at least the year 800, according to a new UCLA-led study in the journal Nature Climate Change. Fire scientists predict another long, expensive, destructive and smoky summer. Welcome to ‘NEW MEXICO INFERNO’
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