Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Fire Season has come early.

Two smallish fires of a few hundred acres each directly east of us had created a show at night. The fires, in Arlington and Gold bar are in heavily forested foothills and are earlier than usual. Typically the west side has substantially more moisture but this spring we've been in the 70's to mid 80's for a month with minimal moisture. Cooler temperatures and more moisture is forecast but it looks like this fire season is shaping up to be a doozy.

If it's a dry spring firefighting agencies scream about forest fuel moisture content being lower than normal and it's going to be a hell of a fire season. Be very scared and rely on them to protect us.

If it's a wet spring they scream about increased understory and flash fuel loads higher than normal and it's going to be a hell of a fire season. Be very scared and rely on them to protect us.

If it's a "normal", boring year, fire danger is high due to it normally being that way in summer, you know. Be scared and all that.

Seeing a pattern?

You are correct FB. Wet springs lead to greater fuel loads later in the summer and dry conditions lead to more combustible fuel loads that are currently present. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

BAN SUMMER!!

Well its all the truth.

The only thing that lowers it to fun, is constant wet. Which we are lucky to have right now.

But my fuel load is horrible if it dries this summer. Might be the worst fuel load in years at this rate. I have grass in parts of the pasture thats thigh deep. And not on a midget.

I get to fight the damn things so I agree. Its often very tough.

The prognosis is not incorrect even though it seems funny to you. And until you've had fire chase you and crown over your head... well it ain't funny. Even though I"ll end with LOL.

In Texas I"d be great with that. We have about 9 months of it.

I"ve seen 100s in all 12 months of the year... upper 90s on Christmas and New Years.. I used to be able to handle the heat, but its finally getting to me.

Jeff, I don't know how you take it. That's insane heat.

I don't deal with it well anymore honestly. Was 40 minutes in full fire gear around 92 the otehr day but humidity was upper 90s... cutting a guy out of his upside down car....

I saw stars by the time I got my gear off.

I overheat really easy lately.....

I'm ready to try 9 monhts of winter. LOL

The rain should help today. Hopefully there's an abundance of it. "Pouring" here as native Washingtonians would say. Just a shower to a midwesterner.

Once I got off the island it was raining to beat hell. Just some light sprinkles here but it looked like it was raining up in the foothills. The lower temperatures and rain was just what we needed. My lawn was turning brown and it's barely May.

Barely a sprinkle here in the south sound. Not even enough to call it rain.

Fireball, I've been fighting fire for over 20 years and lately in the last 4 years we've been seeing a trend that scares the hell out of us. Fires are covering twice as much ground in a given time period than has ever been recorded. This is something new and this type of fire behavior is something weve never encountered before.

Frankly it is something your going to want to pay pretty close attention to if you are one of those folks that lives in a fire prone area. With the right year and conditions I believe we are all going to see it lit up on a scale that dwarfs anything we've seen in our lifetime.

Shod

What's the cause?

Our whammy here is going to be bad, we had enough of a drought in 2011 that its finally killed billions of cedars. And cedars were and are everywhere. They are now dying/dead, falling over and contributing to the fuel. They burn hot and fast.

Once we get a bad enough fire to get away and into the brush, we are going to have an inferno like we've never seen. Usually the brush doesn't burn that great because of green/life/water/moisture... its the duff under that burns... until it gets all teh rest hot and dry enough.... IE slower than normal.

Not sure whats causing fast up there, but I know whats going to cause fast here.... I dread taht day.

The day in 2011 we were running grass trucks 45 mph plus across pastures trying to catch up to the head of the fire before it got away... it got away and what started around 2pm, by 10 pm had burned over 3000 acres... our largest county fire on record.

Unknown but they suspect logging in one of them as the area is being logged, or was logged recently.

Rost---The area these rather small fires are in dense forests. Predominantly Douglas fir, Hemlock (T. Heterophylla) and western red cedar.

Living in the same town as Fireball, we had the Biscuit Fire of 2003 or 04... that fire burned an area larger than the state of Connecticut... but the reason for the size of that fire was access... under the Clinton Administration and spearheaded by Cousin Al Gore... they had closed and let 'return to nature' a bunch of forest service roads... to "Wilderness" once again...

We had severe smoke to live thru around here for 6 weeks on that one... came thru an area burning last July coming back from New Mexico... smoke was so thick, it was almost as dark as night out at 4 in the afternoon, when I was coming down Highway 140 from Klamath Falls to Medford....

What's wrong with fire, other than it threatens people/homes/etc?

And that sucks... its hand lines or wait until a clearing or IF a dozer can get there.

We have a few areas like that around us amazingly. Though we have lots of oaks and then had lots of cedars.

I've no clue how doug fir or hemlock burns. Never seen that thanfully, though IIRC we used spruce top once to light up to al foil some halibut the pilots just brought in years ago in AK and I was amazed somewhat to see that top flare just like cedars do here.

You got it. Nothing. other than its threatening things. Things that used to not be here.

There are to many people in the world now, thats plain to see.