Tragic wildfire season had surprisingly few fires

• The number of wildfires nationwide hit a 30-year low
• The number of acres burned was also well below average
• From an economic loss perspective%2C the wildfire year has been well below average

As the USA's 2013 wildfire season comes to an end, it will be remembered for being unusually quiet for the number of blazes but one of the deadliest for firefighters.

The tragic Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona killed 19 firefighters, the highest death toll for a single fire in 80 years. Colorado endured its most destructive wildfire in state history. And the Rim Fire — a massive blaze near the entrance to iconic Yosemite National Park — was the largest ever in the Sierra Nevada.

Even so, the number of wildfires nationwide hit a 30-year low, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise: As of Friday, just over 43,000 fires had been reported across the country so far this year, according to the fire center.

That is well below the 10-year average of nearly 68,000 fires and the lowest number since accurate record keeping began in the early 1980s, the fire center reports. The number of acres burned was also well below average.

The low number of fires and acres burned were due in part to fortuitous weather conditions: 2013 had neither of the atmospheric circulations usually associated with active wildland fire seasons, meaning the nation was neither in an El Nino nor a La Nina climate pattern, according to Ken Frederick, deputy chief of external affairs with the fire center.

Additionally, Southern California didn't get the fire-fanning Santa Ana winds this fall, and Northern California received substantial rain toward the end of summer, he said. "These factors, to some degree, resulted in a quiet year in terms of the acres burned and the number of fires," he added

Meteorologist Steve Bowen of Aon Benfield, a global reinsurance firm, noted that by late summer, a very active Southwest monsoon pattern brought plentiful rainfall and moisture across the West. "In fact, the July-September period was the wettest in 119 years for the Four Corners region," he said.

From an economic loss perspective, the wildfire year has been well below average: "Total economic damages in 2013 were approximately $700 million, or 46% below the 10-year average of $1.3 billion," Bowen said.

Bowen said that $500 million of that total was in the Black Forest Fire in Colorado.

Though there were fewer fires, they got a lot of attention because they were so dramatic and close to habitable areas. "The impacts of wildfire in the U.S. are not reliant strictly on the number of fires," said Michele Steinberg of the National Fire Protection Association. "The fires happened where people are living," affecting their safety and even their drinking water.

In 2013, fires occurred "in or near urban/suburban areas such as Black Forest, Colorado and Prescott, Ariz., and fires impacting major watersheds that provide drinking water to metropolitan areas (San Francisco)," she said.

Frederick agrees: "Determining the severity of a fire season is subjective," he said. "Acres burned and the number of fires are not the best metrics for determining the severity of a fire season."

"In the wildland fire community, many associate line-of-duty deaths with fire-season severity," he added.

The 19 firefighters who died fighting the Yarnell fire in Arizona brought the national death toll to 34, the most since 1994, when 34 also died, according to spokeswoman Jennifer Jones of the U.S. Forest Service. The Yarnell fire was the worst wildfire tragedy in Arizona history and the highest death toll from a single fire in the nation since 1933.

A year like this may be "the new normal," said Steinberg. "We've developed all of the desirable areas, and now we're moving into fire-prone regions."

She said there's been significant development over the past two decades in places that were not traditionally inhabited, such as woodlands, grasslands, bushlands and forested areas.

Also, as a result of the warming climate, there may be a reduction in the overall number of fires in the West, but the ones that form tend to be much larger, according to a recent report from the Arizona Department of Forestry.