May 18: Rocky Barker’s Blog: Don’t Plan on a Lot of Campfires This Summer

By Rocky Barker, The Idaho Statesman, Boise

May 18–I’ve got an uneasy feeling about fire season this summer.

It feels to me like the wind on the back of my neck at Old Faithful in 1988 just before the firestorm sucked all the oxygen out of the air as it created it own weather on its run through the national shrine.

I’m no expert. But a dry, hot spring after a relatively open winter portends a big fire season in the high country of the northern Rockies.

If the rest of May and especially June stays dry, the snow will come off early and the high elevation forests of places such as the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, the Nez Perce National Forest or even southern parts of the Targhee-Caribou National Forest will be poised for lightning and wind to touch off major fires.

But the low elevation, ponderosa pine forests of the Boise, Payette, Sawtooth and Salmon forests won’t be immune. There are still places where a century of fire suppression has left these forests filled with small trees that carry fires up the ladder to the crowns.

There is some good news. We’ve had some big fire years, leaving large chunks of forests from the Canadian border south to Pocatello either thinned out or burned out of heavy fuels. Prescribed burns from the Clearwater south to the Boise also have contributed. These now offer firefighters strategic breaks in which to steer big blazes.

But other factors nationally add to my discomfort.

California’s season came early. The big fires in Georgia and Florida have overwhelmed firefighting officials.

Most of all, the Great North Woods, Minnesota’s Boundary Waters country has seen the fourth largest fire in state history. A giant wind storm that blew through the area in 1999 left a path of downed timber just waiting for this season’s conditions. Now more than 47 square miles of the area has burned in the United States and another 39 square miles in Canada.

For us, the determining factor will be how hot it is in July and how many windy days we get in August and possibly September. A couple of good soaking rains would help. But don’t plan many campfires this year long into September.

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