By Andrew Hay

(Reuters] – A strangely high number of wildfires erupted in the U.S. Southwest, a result of a drought that has lasted for decades and dry vegetation. This raises concerns about the possibility of a very harsh year.

According to Laura Rabon (NYSE:) Forest spokesperson for Lincoln National, New Mexico, two persons were killed in a fire last week.

Biologists say that rising temperatures have caused winter snowpacks to recede and made fires more likely to light earlier in the season. Wind-driven flames weave through the dry grassland and forest, allowing them to burn earlier. According to climate scientists, the human-caused climate changes have accelerated prolonged drought.

Sometimes gale force winds made it dangerous for firefighters in Arizona and New Mexico to fight the Cook and Tunnel fires. Each of these fires have burned more than Manhattan Island. These fires were just a few of the more than a dozen that were burning across the Southwest.

Lauren Hawksworth from Southern Colorado said her family’s 30 year-old cabin was in danger due to a fire south Prescott. The Tunnel fire also destroyed many homes close to her college town Flagstaff. Her neighboring town of Monte Vista in Colorado also lost 10 houses due to the fire Wednesday.

She tweeted, “The SW seems a frightening place right now.”

An abundance of drought-tolerant grasses, which were able to grow during the strong summer rainfalls of 2021, is what makes it difficult for people to light fires. They would have been reduced in fire risk if they had not been smothered by snowy winters.

A recent Western Colorado University study, Jonathan Coop and others found that biologists predict the U.S. West’s wildfire burning area to double in 2050 under the two-degree Celsius temperature increase scenario.

The National Interagency Fire Center reports that the wildfires have burned approximately 30% more land than usual over the past ten years and about twice as much in 2021.