Smoke drifts from the Tunnel Fire north of Flagstaff, Arizona April 19, 2022 in a still image from video. Image taken April 19, 2022.
Smoke drifts from the Tunnel Fire north of Flagstaff, Arizona April 19, 2022 in a still image from video. Image taken April 19, 2022. Reuters / REUTERS TV

An unusually large number of wildfires burned across the U.S. Southwest on Friday as a decades-long drought combined with abundant dry vegetation to raise concerns the region faced a harsh burning year.

"New Mexico right now has multiple fires going, Arizona has multiple fires going, and that is abnormal for this early in the season," said Laura Rabon, a spokeswoman for the Lincoln National Forest in southern New Mexico where two people died in a blaze last week.

Rising temperatures have lowered winter snowpacks and allowed fires to start earlier in the year as wind-driven flames race through parched forest and grassland, according to biologists. The prolonged drought has been intensified by human-caused climate change, according to climate scientists.

Gale-force winds at times made it too dangerous for fire crews in New Mexico and Arizona to battle the Cook and Tunnel fires, which have each burned areas larger than the island of Manhattan. They were among over a dozen fires burning in the Southwest.

Southern Colorado resident Lauren Hawksworth said her family's 30-year-old cabin was endangered by a fire south of Prescott, Arizona, and that the Tunnel fire had destroyed dozens of homes near her college town of Flagstaff. She also said her neighboring community of Monte Vista, Colorado, lost 10 houses to a fire on Wednesday.

"The SW is a scary place to be right now," she tweeted.

Driving fires is an abundance of standing dry grasses that grew during strong summer rains in 2021. Prior to the drought, they would have been squashed flat by winter snows, reducing fire risk.

Biologists expect the area burned by wildfires in the U.S. West to more than double by as early as mid-century under the scenario of a two-degrees centigrade rise in temperatures, according to a recent study by Western Colorado University professor Jonathan Coop and others.

Total acreage burned so far this year nationwide by wildfires is around 30% above the ten-year average and nearly double the same period in 2021, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.