I’m a little late in posting this, but here is the June/July/August Wildland Fire Potential Outlook.
July, August and September are looking dry for extreme Northwest Montana. The shaded areas are actually west of the Whitefish Divide, but lines mean nothing at that scale.
And this is merely an outlook based on global weather. What we get is what we get. What we do know is that we are dry for June now, even with the moisture that has come. Mountain snowpack is low, which is more of an issue for river floating than it is for fire season.
We should all hope for nice wetting rains spaced weekly through July and August, and the fall rains coming in after Labor Day. Works for me!
Regardless, now is a great time to do your trimming and grass mowing and get prepared for fire season. The July 1 update will give us a better forecast, but we all know we have fire season in July and August, sometimes carrying into September and October. Let’s hope for a short and quiet fire season.
Here is the link to the Outlook itself, and the file is attached:
https://www.nifc.gov/nicc/predictive/outlooks/monthly_seasonal_outlook.pdf