Reading the Tea Leaves Season 4 Episode 1 - A Special Edition "The Second Great Reversal"

* This special edition will kick off the 2023 season. The following episodes will return to the seven-minute format.

2022 started out powder dry across most of the western US and tragically dry in the southwestern US. These conditions were short-lived. Across the Snake River Plain, eastern Washington, northern great plains, and northeastern Oregon timely and abundant spring moisture produced a bumper crop of herbaceous fuel, much of it invasive annual grass, which will be available for the 2023 fire season. In a similar manner, the southwestern US was engulfed in record-setting monsoon conditions just like those occurring in 2021 (The First Great Reversal) which led to the largest wildfires in New Mexico history. Spoiler alert: Right now, fine fuels are deeper and more continuous in the southwest than at the start of the fire season last year. What could this mean for the 2023 season?  

In this webcast, Research Ecologist Dr. Matt Reeves analyzes rangeland fuel conditions across the west with an emphasis on emerging hotspots. All 2022 recordings are located on the Reading the Tea Leaves page.

Projections are based on Reeves' Fuelcasting system - a component of the Rangeland Production Monitoring Service that provides projections of expected fuel conditions this grazing season.