Despite a wet winter, much of Oregon is still in drought, which could contribute to a busy fire season this summer.
At a recent forum on the wildfire outlook, assistant state climatologist and Oregon State University professor Nick Siler said another concern is that soil moisture is at historic lows.
“So about half the state still has extremely, or exceptionally dry soils,” Siler said. “So those are historically dry by our standards. So we didn’t really get a complete recharge of those. And so we expect that to be kind of an issue going into the summer.”
Siler added it’s been warmer than normal lately on the western slopes of the Cascades in Linn, Lane, and Douglas Counties, contributing to fire risk.
The majority of fires in Oregon are human-caused.
Siler’s colleague, OSU professor Erica Fleishmn, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, said there’s always a spike of ignitions around holiday weekends, including the 4th of July and Labor Day.
“So there are predictable human behavior patterns and people can do a lot about controlling that component of wildfire risk,” Fleishman said.
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