As we head into the summer, fire danger continues to increase.
NSPR’s Marc Albert recently spoke with Stephen Leach, meteorologist for the Bureau of Land Management working for Predictive Services, to learn more about what’s predicted for this year’s fire season.
Here are highlights from their conversation. You can also listen at the top of the page.
On higher elevations being vulnerable to fires
In June we think up to 6,000 feet is vulnerable for large fire development because of the dry fuels. So any lightning or even human starts could allow large fires to develop in July. We start to see those upper elevations also become more vulnerable.
On how this year’s rain compares to past years
Rain wise, it's not too different from 2018 — the rainfall amounts and the developing drought that we saw. And you might say that the higher elevations were not impacted as much because we had fairly low amounts of lightning. We definitely had a very quiet lightning year last year, but we also had a lot more moisture, so the ground at higher elevations was pretty moist. This year, we do expect a lot closer to the normal amount of lightning.
On the impact of recent rains
The rain events that we've had do contribute to the brush and tree fuel moisture, and that does buy us some time — a few weeks.
So those do help but at the same time, fuels are on a drying trend. And this last one gave us a lot of lightning and we are seeing some fires pop up here and there. Now they're staying small. They don't spread quite as rapidly. But we do have a few fires out there. Firefighters are getting out there and trying to tackle them before they get too large.
On what areas are predicted to have the most extreme fire danger this season
It looks like the Northern Coast Range. So probably from about Trinity and Humboldt County northward has the highest category of drought that we see in the area, which is extreme drought. We don't have any exceptional drought yet. But that is an extreme drought area. So that's really the dead fuels, the brush and slash and things like that on the ground. So those fuels — anytime we have sunny weather, they're very vulnerable. Really it just takes one lightning event with small amounts of rain to move through an area like that, and we could have long duration project fires — the type that keep firefighters busy for one or two months. So that's the biggest worry area right now.
On predictions for the next rainy season
We always cross our fingers. We don't have any good information on that right now. Some of the indications are that we might be into a weak La Nina next fall and winter. But as we've seen in the last five years or so, we've had both La Ninas and El Nino events that did exactly the opposite of what one would think. So we just don't have a good idea on the fall rainy season yet.
More on what’s expected this season
The main thing is those middle and upper elevations, it's really a fuels driven issue. With the dryness, the snowpack is almost completely gone already. And that's about a month earlier than usual. It really doesn't take a whole lot of lightning to pose a large threat of large fires. Whereas last year, those areas stayed moist well into July. That's going to be the real difference between this year and last year, that the fuels are dry and maybe vulnerable to large fire as much as two months earlier than last year. And so that's a big issue. So it comes down to the starts, ignitions. Two years ago, we didn't have them at those upper elevations, at least not much. We had plenty at the lower elevations.
We always hope that we won't get the starts. If the ignitions come spaced out in more regular intervals, the firefighters do a great job of getting out there and tackling these new starts. It's only when there's so many new starts that they can't get to them all or they're in hard to access areas, it starts spreading them thin — that's when the problems arise.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Click the “play” button to listen to the entire interview.
