Tongass Forest logging hours cut back due to fire danger ~ Global Warming?

The prolonged dry spell prompted the U.S. Forest Service last week to ban timber harvesting in the forest from noon to 8 p.m., when fire danger peaks because of low humidity and high temperatures.
Officials fear that sparks from chain saws and other logging equipment could set off a wildfire.
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Fire danger throughout Southeast Alaska currently ranges from high to very high, according to the Forest Service.
The 17-million-acre Tongass is a temperate rain forest that is usually downright soggy. Average rainfall in Ketchikan, one of the bigger communities in the Tongass, is 155 inches a year. Locals joke that usually the only problem with fire in the Tongass is starting one.
But conditions this spring have been particularly hot and dry in the panhandle, home to Alaska's largest trees and much of the state's logging activity.
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Last weekend, the Forest Service recorded a 101-degree reading on one of its remote weather stations, in the woods about 12 miles northwest of Thorne Bay on Prince of Wales Island, near Ketchikan, said Dexter H. Duehn, fire management officer.

Annette Island recorded 93 degrees on Saturday, a record for that community. And Hoonah experienced 89-degree weather that day, also a record, said Chris Maier, a Juneau-based meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/062404/sta_tongass.shtml

We are experiencing record temperatures for almost two straight weeks now. Very, very unusual. Glaciers are almost raging rivers now instead of ice fields.

Alaska the land of ice and snow is melting.

:kick: