But these farsighted attempts to engineer Nature do have their operational difficulties. Now despite the recent outcry in Congress and the press, I don't believe these Park Service people did anything gravely wrong or unusual. The people setting those backfires expected the heat to go down at night. The heat usually does. Unfortunately, since the planet Earth has been setting heat records for sixteen straight months, the heat does not go down at night in the customary way that it used to do. The night stayed hot, so the fires burned hot. The feds also expected the winds to die down at evening, as well. The wind commonly does die down. This time the wind did not die down. Instead, the wind got worse. Therefore, a backfire, meant to avert a scourge, has become a scourge.