What is the leading cause of Wildfires in the Western United States??????????? PLEASE ANSWER IF U KNO!!! Thanx

Question

What is the leading cause of Wildfires in the Western United States??????????? PLEASE ANSWER IF U KNO!!! Thanx

Answer 1

That is like asking the leading cause of rain.  Wildfires are natural in the Western US.  The tinder builds up and simply waits for SOMETHING to ignite it.

Answer 2

Drier weather and more fuel leads to more wild fires.

Answer 3

Most fires are caused by lightning. But in the Western States a great number are caused by people.

Answer 4

I believe the question has been answered correctly.

I see nothing to add, except for the following.

Answer 5

probably winds and dry vegatation that leads to bigger [plants then a wildfire

Answer 6

It matters a lot that we know what causes fires.

But conditions that make them grow into major conflagrations may be more important.

Lightning and careless use of fire are main causes.

But we have too much fuel  strewn about on the  landscape. And the fuel is being prepared by scorching suns and low rains, disease, so that we have a fire waiting for a spark to set it free.

When we have frequent small rains, we could support a lot of vegetation. But when we have  rains that are further apart, even when they drop a major deluge at each time they come, we start to see more of the vegetation die, and bleach in the sun.

Simply, if we have more difficult situation for plant life, we are moving toward deep desertification. At that stage, we will no longer have volumes of dead and dying vegetation carpeting the landscape, so we get fewer and less devastating wild fires. We may not like the result.

Answer 7

Several reasons, one year we have record rainfalls which allows the under brush to grow quickly, and then we have several years of low rain fall (like this year), and all of that under brush drys out and becomes extremely flammable, and when the humidity drops low as it does in the late spring and summer, along with dry north winds you have a recipe for fire storms.

Second reason, human...arson, sparks from lawn mowers, weed eaters, camp fires not put out properly, a cigarette thrown from a car window, a hot muffler on a car that parks on dry grass etc.  

Third reason is mother nature herself, lightning.  The planet was designed as a perfect eco system, and fires were to clear Forrest's of excessive growth, and it worked well until humans came along.