United States

By Samantha Kramer, AccuWeather.com Staff Writer

July 09, 2012; 8:07 PM

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Firefighters look for hot spots in the Waldo Canyon fire, Colorado's most destructive wildfire in state history. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

No snow, no rain. The beautiful Colorado landscape, mountainous and rocky with a few scattered plains, had turned into a desert by the time spring ended.

Instead of refreshing rains, heat waves arrived. Before firefighters knew it, they were battling the state's most destructive wildfires in history. Now, record-breaking wildfires and temperatures have many wondering if climate change is the culprit.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the past 11 years have all ranked as one of the 12 warmest on record in terms of global average temperatures.

Not one year before 1987 has made the top-20 chart of warmest years globally.

In a July 3 press conference in Colorado Springs, Colo., Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano connected the intense weather and its effects to climate change.

"You have to look at climate change over a period of years, not just one summer," Napolitano said. "You could always have one abnormal summer. But when you see one after another after another then you can see, yeah, there's a pattern here."

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, right, held a news conference on July 3 after touring the destruction caused by the Waldo Canyon wildfire in Colorado Springs, Colo. Napolitano linked climate change as a possible cause of the record-breaking temperatures the country has seen in recent years. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)

Harris Sherman, the Natural Resources and Environment undersecretary for the United States Department of Agriculture, told The Washington Post that there have been record fires in 10 states over the last decade.

He said the dry conditions and stovetop temperatures are an indicator of climate change.

"The climate is changing, and these fires are a very strong indicator of that," Sherman told the Post.

Colorado Springs, scorched devastatingly by the Waldo Canyon Fire that burned more than 18,000 acres, endured temperatures hot enough to make the city's history books.

The last week of June, the city saw two days of 100-degree weather -- tying their all time record -- and broke the record last Thursday at 101.

The average temperature for that area this time of year is about 83 degrees.

Colorado Springs also received only 14 percent of the rainfall that it gathers on average in June.

For Lori Hodges, field manager for the Colorado Office of Emergency Management, the fires are behaving in ways she's never seen in her 15 years on the job.

"We had a really dry winter and no snow in March, which is usually the month of heaviest snow fall," Hodges said. "These conditions are record lows for moisture content. The fires are moving too fast for us to be able to control them."