No “Season Ending Event” In Oregon’s Fire Forecast – KXL

Fall is right around the corner, but Oregon’s fire season is far from over. “It’s winding down, but we’re not there yet,” says Carol Connolly, with the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center.

Seven large fires are still burning across 80,000 acres in Oregon. But Connolly says crews are making progress, “Of the seven of those fires, three of them are at or above 90% contained.” New fires could be on the way, though, following abundant lightning. In the last 10 days there have been close to 36,000 lightning strikes in the Northwest. “Lightning hits, and it can just move around on the ground for sometimes weeks before it gets enough fuel on it for the smoke to rise above the treetops,” says Connolly, “So, we do have reconnaissance out, we do have prepositioned initial attack resources, because we know we’re going to have some lightning fires that we’re going to continue to pick up in the next week or two.” She says they’ve already seen impacts from the storm, “Eight fires in Oregon over the last 24 hours; they accumulated to only about an acre. So, our initial attack resources are getting to them and keeping them small.”

While conditions are improving, “Fuel conditions on the ground still indicate we could have fires. It’s not so wet out there in parts of Oregon that it would be a season-ending event,” says Connolly, “We are getting a lot of warming and drying trends, then some moisture, warming and drying, some moisture. Something typical you’d see in the fall. Currently, we are in one of those warming trends for the next few days.”

The largest active fire remains the Emigrant Fire in the Willamette National Forest, at 32,354 acres and 36% containment, as of Tuesday morning. In Southwest Oregon, the Moon Complex is  9% contained, at almost 4,000 acres across the Pinnacle, Backbone and Tate fires.