Brush fire breaks out in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park as Northeast drought continues

The cause of the fire is under investigation. NBC New York reported there were no injures.

“Daylight will help us figure out the cause and origin of this fire,” Tucker said.

The fire highlights the danger from the drought, and officials thanked the person who spotted the fire and called it in to authorities.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in an X post Friday that his office was monitoring the fire and the FDNY, NYC Emergency Management and NYC Department of Parks and Recreation were on the scene.

The latest blaze comes amid a weekslong drought in the Northeast, brought on by dry and unseasonably warm conditions. A number of fires have broken out in New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, and windy conditions are heightening the fire risk in the region.

On Thursday, “temperatures soared to well above normal readings,” the National Weather Service office in New York said. A cool down forecast to begin late Friday was expected to bring temperatures down to “right around normal” Saturday.

The FDNY said Friday that New York City was under a drought watch “due to a historic lack of rainfall.”

October was one of the driest months on record in the U.S., particularly in the Northeast, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Cities like Philadelphia; Newark, New Jersey; Wilmington, Delaware; and Norfolk, Virginia, recorded no rain that month, according to the Southeast Regional Climate Center, which collects precipitation data from more than 1,400 weather stations across the country.

The entire New York City region was under a red flag warning Friday, the weather service said, with wind gusts up to 30 mph possible. The service warned “fires could start and spread rapidly” and to “avoid any outdoor burning.”