Wildfires raging this week in southern Georgia and northern Florida were fueled by a combination of hot and windy conditions, severe drought and dried-out vegetation from past hurricanes all feeding the blazes.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s a combination climate scientists have been warning about for decades as the planet gets hotter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not normal at all, but it is consistent with what we\u2019ve been worried about with climate change,\u201d said Kaitlyn Trudeau, a climate scientist at the nonprofit science research group Climate Central. \u201cIt all speaks to how dramatically we really are changing our climate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thousands of acres are on fire across the two states<\/a>, with one blaze in Atkinson, Georgia, already destroying around 90 homes since it broke out Monday.<\/p>\n Multiple counties in both states have enacted burn bans \u2014 including the first burn bans in Georgia \u2014 and Gov. Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency<\/a> Wednesday for 91 counties. <\/p>\n Widespread drought in the Southeast is largely to blame for the fires, but their spread has also been fueled by leftover debris from past hurricanes that swept across the region \u2014 an issue that also has connections to climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n In particular, Hurricane Helene in 2024<\/a>, which made landfall as a Category 4 storm in Florida\u2019s Big Bend region, left behind downed trees, branches and other vegetation ripe to burn. <\/p>\n \u201cThe hurricane basically ripped up a bunch of trees and kind of just dropped them all in the area,\u201d Trudeau said. \u201cThey sat out in the sun drying out, and the more oily trees can be super flammable when they dry out.\u201d<\/p>\n She added that this kind of dried-out vegetation exacerbates the risk of wildfires, helping them grow and become more destructive when they do break out.<\/p>\n Scientists have said that devastating wildfires will become more common<\/a> in a warming world, and studies have shown that blazes will not only be more frequent, but also more destructive, as a result of climate change. The findings have enormous environmental, financial and health consequences for communities across the country and the world.<\/p>\n Even in humid places like the Southeast, which is not thought to be as prone to wildfires as the western United States, regional risks are changing in a warming world, according to Trudeau.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is what we\u2019ve been expecting with climate change,\u201d she said. \u201cParts of the Southeast have been super, super dry. And we\u2019ve seen in these places, even though it\u2019s more humid, climate change is making the atmosphere thirstier. As it gets hotter, the amount of moisture that is pulled out of the landscape or sucked out of plants and soils, also increases.\u201d<\/p>\n Wildfires need two main ingredients to burn: conducive fire weather \u2014 dry conditions together with lightning and wind<\/a>, for instance \u2014 and \u201cfuel,\u201d which consists of dead trees, dried-out leaves and any other flammable vegetation.<\/p>\n As temperatures rise due to climate change, the atmosphere can more efficiently pull moisture out of trees and soil. When a region is out under persistent drought at the same time, there is not enough precipitation to compensate, setting the stage for destructive wildfires<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776986872330_nn_agi_wildfires_thursday_260423_S3_1920x1080-zikpha.jpg\")
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