Hurricane Michael left a jumbled mess of downed trees. Cleaning it up is even harder than it sounds, and now dead trees are burning.

The wildfires that broke out in the Florida Panhandle in early March 2022 were the nightmare fire managers had feared since the day Hurricane Michael flattened millions of trees there in 2018. It might sound odd – hurricanes helping to fuel wildfires. But Michael’s 160 mph winds left tangles of dead trees that were ready to burn.

We asked University of Florida fire ecologist David Godwin, who co-leads the Southern Fire Exchange, to explain the role the hurricane played in wildfires that forced over 1,000 people to evacuate their homes.