Is the Northeast Entering Its Wildfire Era?

Rocky and Ren Hazelman run a chicken farm in West Milford, N.J., about 10 miles south from the Jennings Creek wildfire along the state’s border with New York.

Their 2,000 chickens require about 150 gallons of water daily, and the couple usually has no trouble collecting the needed rainwater for the job. But that is no longer possible: An extraordinarily dry fall has brought some of the worst drought conditions in the region in decades.

The weather extremes caused by global warming, which are making it harder for the Hazelmans to tend to their flock, are the same ones draining reservoirs and sparking wildfires across the Northeast, like the 5,300-acre Jennings blaze, which is now mostly contained, down the road from their farm.

The Northeast will almost certainly never experience the scale of wildfires seen in more rural Western states. But experts say that the region should prepare for more periodic droughts, which will increase the risk of fires, because of the weather-distorting effects of greenhouse gases.

Sudden and extreme shifts from wet to dry seasons, which will become increasingly common as the world heats up, experts said, feed a cycle of vegetation growth that then dries out rapidly, providing ample fuel for fires.