And as Andrew Revkin points out in the NY Times, so many homes have burned in the Texas drought because so many more homes have been built out in the pines in the past 30 years.

It does look like this round of wet is spread further west, but overlapping where Irene hit in NJ and NY, for a nasty double dipping. :-(

~ Becky in Long Beach (with Vermont, NY and NJ connections)