you worried about wildfire in your unit?

[boom]

i'm already watching the weather. rain is way down.

this is going to be a long dry summer, and our unit didnt get the rain it typically gets.

yikes. i did the rain dance and it rained here!! not there.

 

[MTguy0341]

Yeah been a pretty dry May. Hopefully can get some wet days in June

 

[Jbehredt]

Had a nice little burn 2 summers ago.... I’m worried somebody will beat us to it

 

[boom]

maybe i'm just a tad gun-shy from our Santa Rosa wildfire last Oct.

here to a decent remaining wet season for everyone!

 

[StopMakingSense]

Really hoping for rain for the tag I drew but it's not looking good in New Mexico, luckily it's 9k+

 

[danarnold]

i'm already watching the weather. rain is way down.

this is going to be a long dry summer, and our unit didnt get the rain it typically gets.

yikes. i did the rain dance and it rained here!! not there.

I wasn't till now....thanks

 

[Oregon]

I’ve got this hill. Full of giant sage brush and Aspen trees. More of a mule deer spot. Been hunting it for 25 years.
Every single summer i remind myself how horrible a fire would be. 3 years s ago, a fire burned everything to the north of the road I drive in on. I turn south. Still looks like the moon to the north. Don’t mind fire in timber, but old growth sage burns suck.

 

[bz_711]

I've been keeping more of eye on it than usual...another reason being that I look to take family camping in late July/early Aug in elk country and really don't like family camping trips with a fire ban in place...Just not the same to sit around and stare at the butane flame

 

[chindits]

I’m praying for fire especially in the la garittas and San Juan’s. That beetle kill ain’t going away on its own and the little prescribed burns they do around here are a joke

 

[chindits]

Im surprised your sage didn’t recover with bunch grasses and forbs. That’s typical in our high sage basin. The Willey fire up antelope creek is a great example. Also a couple prescribed burns up rainbow had similar results

 

[jmez]

I'm always concerned with fire in the west.

 

[ljalberta]

Could definitely use some big fires in a few areas I like to hunt.

 

[loggerchas]

Not to be the bearer of bad news here.....but.....this topic hits home with my past life as a forester, wildland firefighter, and logger.

While pine beetles are always present in the forests, they are not unlike lawyers (no offense to any Esquires in the crowd here)- they feed on distress. Drought conditions stress the trees and make them unable to fend off the usual resident population of bugs. Fire danger may increase this year due to drought conditions which impact the existing fuels, but the real danger will be the next year or two when the trees that are killed by the beetles die and dry out and create ladder fuels that then provide the conditions ripe for catastrophic fire intensities into the future.

Drought conditions make a fire difficult to manage with existing fuels. The long term impacts of the drought make future fires, even in good water conditions, potentially much more intense for many years to come because of additional dry fuels to feed the fire and raise the fire into tree canopies.

Like others have noted here - fire is good for habitat diversity and not used near enough in many areas, but extremely intense fires can take 5-10x longer to recover with grasses/forbs and potential for soil movement is much greater after a high intensity event.

Keep an eye on InciWeb the Incident Information System for current incidents in your area.

 

[2blade]

I'm not concerned about my area this year at all. It all burnt to the ground last year, there isn't anything left to burn. Now when all these trees start falling over that will be a hole nother matter.