Forecast on summer/fire danger?

[otowi]

Originally Posted by Phil P

That's how it was when the BF and waldo canyon fire hit. 1 or 2 weeks later, the rains came hard. It's just that the ****** of an arsonist happened to light them before the rains could come to rescue.

We are nowhere near as dry as we were in those two years - people quickly forget how bad that drought and heat wave was. Which is sad, because it makes it all the more inevitable that we will not be prepared when the next one comes. This year we seem to be having a very average year so far. Of course that doesn't make a bad fire impossible, but the conditions 5 years ago were something else altogether.

[509]

Originally Posted by Dangerous Dave

I work for the Forest Service and I fire training behind me (Red Card). I'm not claiming to be an expert, by any means, but what I can say is take all of the predictions about fire season in any given year and throw them in the trash. We've actually had a very wet spring and our winter produced nearly 10' of snow this year. Most would say our chance of fires this year hovers around zero percent. If it dries up and we have 2-3 weeks of 80's and 90's with lots of sun, all that stuff that has or will grow is going up in flames. On the flip side, we've had warm, dry winters with little snow and all the experts were telling us to get ready for an active fire season, then all it did was rain all summer.


It's a mixed bag. Nobody can predict it.

Unlike Dangerous Dave I look forward to the official forecast for fire season. Generally, they do pretty good. The problem in the west is the elevational difference. We have had several fires and evacuations in town already, but the National Forest is still green.

Anyway, here is the official forecast: https://www.predictiveservices.nifc....al_outlook.pdf

[dr.frog]

The year of the Waldo Canyon fire, we'd had an unusually warm/dry spring, and my recollection is that the week of the fire we had record heat around 100 degrees for several days in a row. This summer hasn't been like that at all.