“Things are dry out there, and getting drier,” said Chuck Stanich, fire management officer on the Lolo National Forest. “As of today, we're pretty much in a normal type of summer mode.”
The region's forests, as is not uncommon, go from greener to browner, north to south.
So said Steve Frye, operations manager for the Kalispell office of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. Up north, Frye said, the tools used to measure how dry is dry are pegging this season right at the 20-year average.
Grasses, he said, are mostly green and aren't carrying fire yet. That's especially true up high, above 4,500 feet, “but it's changing rapidly, as this hot weather takes hold.”
His office already has responded to several small forest fires, but most were carried by larger fuels - stumps and logs - rather than fine grasses.
“Green-up came later this year,” Frye said, “so I think we can expect it to remain green a little later.”
Track south, however, and grasses already are browning.
“We're right at or slightly above the curve for average,” Stanich said of the Lolo. “The grasses are drying out, and they will carry fire.”
Stanich said the long winter didn't really put much snow on valley floors, and so those areas soaked up spring rains and then evaporated the moisture back out in a hurry. He puts fire danger in and around Missoula at the “moderate” level.
“It's not just the heat,” he said, “but the winds that go with it and the number of dry days. We're into an extended dry season now.”
Farther south still, on the Bitterroot National Forest, “we're tracking behind last year in terms of drying out, but we're well above the 10-year average.”
That's according to fire manager Buster Windhorst, who puts fire danger on the Bitterroot at “high.”
“The upper elevations are still pretty good,” he said, “but down low we're really quite dry.”
The good news, Windhorst said, is the region isn't facing the triple-digit temperatures that scorched forests last summer at this time.
“A few days of that,” he said, “and anything can happen.
“I think everyone needs to understand that we're in full summer conditions. All the signals show a very dry landscape, and it's getting drier by the day.”
Reporter Michael Jamison can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at mjamison@missoulian.com.
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