CHARLESTON, W.Va – This week’s rain is a welcome sight in the West Virginia Division of Forestry offices, as concerns began to develop with many areas of the state experiencing drought conditions recently.
While the state’s statutory fire season does not begin until October 1, state forester Jeremy Jones is relieved to see some precipitation this week.
“We were starting to, obviously, be concerned. Things were drying out. We were getting back a little bit towards the similar conditions we had late last summer, but traditionally, we don’t start to get really worried until after the leaves come down,” he said.
As of Tuesday afternoon, fire danger levels in the majority of the state dropped to low, with none of the 55 counties rated above moderate danger. Jones said the rain will go a long way in decreasing the threat.
“What that’ll do is that’ll just kind of reset all of our fire dangers. We were starting to creep up into moderate fire danger throughout the state with a few small pockets of elevated fire danger,” he said.
While the leaves haven’t fallen yet and the forest canopy allows temperatures on the ground to stay cooler, there are a few threats that dry conditions this time of year could ramp up.
“What this’ll hopefully do is our ‘flashy fuels,’ the grasses out in the fields and things like that, people’s yards and things of that nature, hopefully it’s enough moisture to kind of invigorate those fuels again, and they’ll hopefully turn green again and won’t be as receptive to fires,” Jones said.
With the statutory fire season still a little over a week away, Jones encourages anyone conducting burning to still do it within the state’s burning guidelines even though there are not currently burning restrictions in place. In the meantime, the Division of Forestry is getting ready for the fall.
“We’re just getting out all of our equipment, going through the checks on those: our leaf blowers, our water pumps, the fire engines that we do have, and making sure that all that equipment is caught up on maintenance and ready to go,” Jones said.