An extended drought of more than a year, including a winter of minimal snowfall set up a pattern of fire danger that lasted through the summer of 1871 and caused concern throughout the Midwest. A problem exacerbated by high temperatures and strong winds in the Great Lakes area in the US and neighboring Canadian Provinces…
Conflagrations like the 1871 Peshtigo Fire have reemerged as important threats across North America and around the world. Understanding the factors and the phenomena that produced the fire environment of that day is possible because of weather observations collected and recorded at the time and studies of extreme fire behavior that continue to this day.…
For 50 years the kind of fire that swept over Peshtigo plagued the Great Lakes region, in both the U.S. and Canada. The fires furnished an important background for state-sponsored conservation and especially a program of fire protection. Presented by Steve Pyne, an emeritus professor at Arizona State University, and the author of many fire…
