Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Recipe for a wild fire

You may have read about all the wildfires we are having in the western U.S. this summer.  Every year brings some fires, but this one is primed to be huge.  So, what makes for a big fire year?
  • Very low snowfall during the winter.  We only got about 75% of our normal snowfall.  I guess that makes up for the 140% we got last year.
  • No rain in May.  Just a bit of snow over Memorial Day.
  • Not a drop of rain in June. There is none in the 10 day forecast.
  • Consistently high winds.  They just keep blowing. Almost every day has winds up around 20 mph with much higher gusts.  
  • Bone dry air.  The weathermen were commenting that it was good news that the humidity was UP to 15%.  The past week has been in single digits.
Here's the grass on the hill behind our house and it still has two months of summer to really dry out.  It's already crunchy to walk on.
I am reading about all the evacuations and burning homes in Colorado. Julie and I will be working on our evacuation plan and refilming our house contents for insurance.

1 comment:

Emily J. said...

Planning sounds like a good move. And I hope you don't need to use that plan.