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Oregon faces widespread drought, high wildfire
Members of the Oregon Department of Forestry and cadets from Oregon Air Patrol attend a training on how to reload retardant into firefighting aircraft on Thursday, July 12, 2018, at Salem Municipal Airport. Statesman Journal
Oregon will enter the hottest time of the season already facing widespread drought and heightened wildfire danger.
After a winter of below-average snowpack, and one of the hottest and driest spring seasons on record, much of Oregon could become a tinderbox by late summer and fall.
Seventy percent of Oregon is already in severe or moderate drought and 95 percent is classified as “abnormally dry,” according to a report issued Tuesday by the U.S. drought monitor.
That’s largely due to May and June, which combined were the fifth-driest and eighth-hottest on record in the Willamette Valley, in records that go back to 1895, meteorologists at the National Weather Service said.
“The month of May really started us down this path, with very hot and dry weather, that mostly continued into June,” NWS meteorologist Matthew Cullen said. “Looking forward, we’re expecting extremely hot and dry conditions that look likely to continue into late July.”
Those conditions have already brought more wildfire than normal, and it’s expected to get worse.
The number of acres burned by wildfires this season — 125,000 acres — is already double that of recent years, according to numbers from the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center.
More: Oregon wildfire cost skyrockets to $454 million in 2017
More: Did the Forest Service ignore the Whitewater Fire and allow it to burn out of control?
That trend is expected to continue, with 90 to 100 percent of the state facing above normal danger for “significant wildland fire potential” in July and August, according to a report by the National Interagency Fire Center.
“By late July, fire activity is expected to increase across Oregon and Washington,” the report said. “The prevailing thought is that the summer of 2018 will be another hot and dry one.”
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