Blazing futures? Unlikely locally
Understanding wildfire risk in the Adirondacks

The state Department of Environmental Conservation’s fire danger sign — which is updated based on current fire risk assessments for the region — is seen in Ray Brook on Wednesday. (Enterprise photo — Chris Gaige)
PAUL SMITHS — With scenes of utter devastation from California wildfires blanketing the news cycle over the past couple of weeks, the uncomfortable question arises: could something similar happen locally?
According to a local expert, the chances of that — while not zero — are “very, very unlikely.”
Justin Waskiewicz is an associate professor of forestry at Paul Smith’s College. He said the overall risk of destruction from wildfires is low, but not completely out of the question for the Adirondacks.
“Not impossible,” he said. “You can get a drought. You can get this perfect storm of conditions that happen. I’ll never say that you can never have a fire here, but it is not likely and it’s probably becoming even less likely over time.”
Although the Adirondacks are a heavily forested region — potentially providing fuel for fires — Waskiewicz said it was important to focus on forest composition, which he added is always undergoing ecological change. Some vegetation species, he said, are much more flammable than others.
In some areas of the world, he said more flammable vegetation is becoming more common, increasing the wildfire risk. In other areas, however, more fire-retardant vegetation is increasing in forests. The Adirondacks have the good fortune of finding itself in the latter category.
“In some forest types, forests become more flammable with time,” he said. “More flammable species become more abundant. That’s true in some forest types, but not ours. Our forest types tend to become less flammable over time, and that’s true throughout the Northeast.”
Waskiewicz said vegetation composition is one of three primary factors that go into predicting wildfire risk.
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Fire triangles
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Fire needs three ingredients to burn: fuel material, oxygen and heat. Together, they are commonly known as the “fire triangle.” Waskiewicz said that when it comes to assessing both the near-term and general the risks of wildfires, the term can be extended to each.
Waskiewicz said the near-term extension of the term is known as the “fire behavior triangle.” He said the three factors of this are available ground fuels, local topography and weather conditions. He said that when taken together, these offer a picture of the fire’s day-to-day behavior once it has started to burn.
More generally, there is the “fire regime trend,” which assesses how often fires are likely to occur for an area based on more synoptic factors. Waskiewicz said these include changes to vegetation composition, climate and human interactions with an area.
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Assessing the trends
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Waskiewicz said that for the Adirondacks, the three parts of the general trend are moving in different directions. The vegetation component is reducing risk. The climate component is ambiguous, he said, noting that while the area’s climate is warming — which increases wildfire risk — it is also becoming wetter. The human component, however, is increasing risk.
“One of the bigger risk factors for fire is human activity,” he said. “If I were worried really at all, it’d be about that. There’s more and more human activity in the Adirondacks, more and more people coming here to recreate and so forth.”
Waskiewicz said this increases opportunities for potential ignition, such as someone throwing a lit cigarette butt out their window while driving or people not extinguishing a campfire before leaving the site. He said that of the 150 wildfires that ignited in New York last season, 147 of them were caused by humans — only three began as the result of a lightning strike.
While the human factor does heighten the risk, Waskiewicz said that looking at the big picture, the data has not pointed to an alarming increase in burns in New York. In fact, he said, things have been headed in the opposite direction.
Waskiewicz said that since 1985, when scientists began keeping consistent wildfire records for the state, the number of fires annually, as well as the amount of acreage burned have both been decreasing. He said that may reflect a combination of environmental factors — such as the vegetation successional pattern and wetter conditions — as well as better policy, such as prudent implementation of the “burn ban” across portions of or the entire state when conditions warrant it.
“We’ve had a definite decrease in the number of fires since 1985 when we’ve been keeping consistent records and in New York, there’s also a decrease in the acreage burned over that time,” he said. “That may be a reflection of that (vegetation) successional pattern … combined with some changes in rules like the ‘burn ban’ and combined with climate change which isn’t just warmer, but it’s also — in our case (in New York) wetter.”
“There’s all these factors involved but, in general, I don’t lose sleep over the risk of fire in this part of the world,” he said.
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Predicting risk, upgrading infrasture
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According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “weather” refers to the day-to-day atmospheric conditions, while climate “describes what the weather is like over a long period of time in a specific area.”
Waskiewicz said that despite climate trends in this area that don’t support an increased fire risk, there will continue to be stretches of heightened risk in the area, as a result of transitory droughts and other weather-driven factors.
Being prepared, and staying observant of emerging risks — is often crucial to minimizing destruction to life, land and development from wildfires.
He said when predicting wildfire risk in the immediate and short term, experts primarily consider drought severity indices, which take into account how long has it been since it rained and soil moisture content. Along with that, they look at wind and humidity conditions. Wind and dry air, when combined with an elevated antecedent drought index, magnifies the near-term fire risk
In October, the state took a data-driven step to upgrade its response capabilities.
Last fall, New York upgraded its Mesonet — a network of 127 weather stations throughout the state that measure the same data to provide a synchronized and detailed weather conditions picture — to include a fire weather page.
The upgrade is a collaboration between the Mesonet, which is operated by the University at Albany, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Previously, the DEC had used a smaller and older network of monitoring stations to assess fire risk, according to DJ McGuinnes, a Mesonet software engineer who helped put together the fire weather page.
He said the DEC’s network of stations will be decommissioned, as the Mesonet sites provide the same information at more locations across the state, making operating the two networks simultaneously redundant.
He said the new partnership gives experts a lot more data than what they had previously, leading to more informed decision-making. He said that better data visualization and risk indices also make it easier for the public to understand the wildfire risk level.
“This helps (the DEC) with their decision-making and moving resources around and which areas to keep an eye on,” he said.
The website can be viewed at nysmesonet.org/weather/firewx.
In announcing the partnership in October, DEC Interim Commissioner Sean Mahar lauded the collaboration.
“DEC’s partnership with New York State Mesonet will offer enhanced and reliable wildfire information to help keep communities safe by harnessing the power of the Mesonet to increase the number of stations recording observations in each of the state’s Fire Danger Rating Areas,” he said. “This data will help inform a new, easier-to-read map that will benefit New Yorkers when wildfire dangers arise.”
When a fire does break out, DEC forest rangers — who receive frequent and specialized training on how to fight fires — are often on the front line. Some are currently deployed to California to assist the state with its wildfires as part of a U.S. Forest Service mutual aid program, which fully reimburses or directly pays all travel and personnel expenses, according to a statement from the Governor’s office announcing the deployment.
“In addition to helping contain wildfires and minimize damage to people and property, these crews gain valuable experience that will be utilized fighting wildfires and managing incidents in New York,” the statement noted.
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Key differences
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Waskiewicz said that while the differences between the Adirondacks and southern California climates are fairly apparent, the Adirondacks are also — albeit to a lesser degree than California — notably distinct from the forests of Quebec, which experienced massive wildfires during 2023 and led to frequent smoke-filled skies locally.
“It’s sort of a combination of features that make that landscape much more likely to have those giant fires than our landscape,” he said. “It’s not as broken up by roads, it’s not as accessible, it’s a different vegetation type. The weather is also somewhat different — colder overall but where the rainfall patterns occur over the year is different.”
He said that Quebec is largely composed of boreal forests — characterized by mostly conifer trees, which are more flammable — while the Adirondacks are composed of mixed forests. He also said that region is extremely remote. In contrast to mostly human-caused fires in this area, Waskiewicz said that most Quebec fires are caused by lightning, and are often impossible to detect early.
“It’s hard to imagine how big those landscapes are in Quebec,” he said. “We think of the Adirondacks as being remote and rural, but it’s nothing (in comparison). … Lightning-started fires are typically way out in the willy wags,” he said. “Nobody even knows they’ve happened until they’ve gotten so far along that they’re hard to stop.”
In addition to being different than its neighboring region to the north, the Adirondacks are also a vastly different place than when the region experienced massive wildfires around the beginning of the 20th century.
“If you go back through the history books, we’ve had some extremely large ones around the turn of the century but the conditions surrounding that were different and don’t exist anymore,” he said. “Heavy logging, a lot of branches and leaves on the ground and steam engines running through were throwing out sparks. Those kinds of conditions don’t exist anymore.”