Wood ignites at temperatures in the hundreds of degrees. How are some wildfires supposedly started by sunlight without human action or lightning?
In: 1508
Former Canadian forest fire fighter here.
The sun does not cause trees to ignite unless there are very unusual circumstances. (I once saw a video from Dubai of a resinous palm tree start to smoke in the heat, I wasn’t able to verify the truth of it though)
You have to remember, that on the ground in forests is dead wood, leaves, tiny branches, dried mosses and lichen, etc. Those catch fire a lot easier.
When we keep track of fire hazard, we look at three numbers. The drought code (how much rain we have had in the past and the current temperature), the FFMC (Fine fuel moisture code. small branches, leaf litter, dried grasses, etc) and the DMC (Duff moisture code. The organic layers under the surface litter, larger branches)
Up here, we only see trees as the ignition point through human interaction (We once had someone soak a tree in gasoline to get rid of hornets, then later that day someone else built a fire at the base to ‘smoke them out’) or lightning strikes.
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