Tag: National Wildland Fire Potential

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

Greetings everyone. Here is our first Outlook that can give us a reasonable hint of what the fire season might look like. The good news is that the forecast looks like a “normal” fire season for Northwest Montana – which of course includes the North Fork.

The bad news, of course, is that the rest of Montana, especially east of the Divide, is looking at potentially being significantly above normal wildland fire potential.
The caution for us is that even with the cool spring, and increased snowpack over the past month or two, those factors are transitory. That is, if we wind up turning off hot and dry in early July, the positive effects that the cool, wet spring we had will dissipate quickly. We had that a few years ago, and meteorologists called it a “Flash Drought.” It was not forecasted that summer and caught the meteorologists by surprise. They apologized the next spring for having told us we would have a “Slow Normal” fire season…

So, we need to prepare for a reasonably active fire season, as normal. One factor of course, is that resources will be spread thin with potentially a lot of activity elsewhere in the Northern Rockies, and around the Country.

While these Outlooks are useful, there are limits to their accuracy. The July Outlook will give us a better look at the conditions going into July, and the weather systems that might affect the rest of our fire season.

Stay tuned.

Thanks to all! Remember our Fuels Field Trip on June 15, and our Firewise Day on July 13.

See you all there! Thanks. Allen

Read the full outlook:
https://www.predictiveservices.nifc.gov/outlooks/monthly_seasonal_outlook.pdf

Good Afternoon!  The August/September/October Wildland Fire Potential Outlook was posted this morning, and it doesn’t contain good news for the North Fork or Montana.

In contrast to the July Outlook, the August Outlook projects Above Normal Wildland Fire Potential to extend through September in addition to August.  The July Outlook had us returning to normal in September.  Above Normal conditions will persist in October on the Eastside.  Northwest Montana should return to normal in October.  Here are some excerpts: Continue reading August National Wildland Fire Potential Outlook

Greetings All.  Click here to view the full nationwide July/August/September Wildland Fire Potential Outlook.

Here is the graphical summary by month:

Continue reading July/August/September Wildland Fire Potential Outlook

I am a little late forwarding out the current National Wildland Fire Potential.  I’ll be sharing this through the fire season until we get our season ending event.

This is as we would expect given our dry spring and spreading drought.  The good news is that we in the North Fork are in a better position than most of the West.  That is not much consolation since the outlook across the West is grim.  Specifically for the Northern Rockies, here are some excerpts: Continue reading June 1st National Wildland Fire Potential