SEATTLE — The National Weather Service issued a Red Flag Warning for much of the Cascades Tuesday, and fire crews say they worked to put small fires out quickly to keep them from spreading.
Firefighters are urging Washingtonians to be cautious throughout the course of the summer, especially in areas that are part of the wildland-urban interface - the transition zone between undeveloped wildland and human development.
Eastside Fire and Rescue Battalion Chief Jordan Simmonds urges people not to do any reckless burning, to be cautious with campfires, and not to flick cigarette butts into bark or garbage stands amid.
"Taking care of your house, keeping the gutters clean, making sure you don't have miscellaneous things around your house, especially if you are near a wooded area, piles, any decks and things like that just trying to keep that clear of brush that would carry fires to your house," Simmonds said. "Ninety-five percent of the time here those things don't start fires because we're in western Washington, so the fuels tend to be pretty wet, but when it comes to the summertime and it's been drying like this, we do see those things will start fires."
Simmonds says they've watched as fuels have been drying out for several weeks, and cautions that even light grasses can catch quickly on a hot dry day.
"We'll see multiple bark fires during the course of the day, already today we've heard of several fence fires and fires that have carried through the bark, and in populated areas," Simmonds said.
Karin Bumbaco, Washington's assistant state climatologist at the University of Washington, says a Red Flag Warning this early is not unprecedented, but believes it will likely be a sensitive season for wildfire risk.
"For May, western Washington received less than half their usual precipitation- some places even worse," Bumbaco said. "So the coast for example received only between 10 and 20% of their usual May precipitation, so if you think to typical years, we usually are still pretty wet in May. So when you're talking about less than half, that is still a substantial amount that we missed out on."
Bumbaco also points to above-average temperatures in May that melted a good amount of the snowpack gathered.
"It's not unprecedented, I can remember a year in March when we had these sorts of conditions, but it's just that weather is exactly right for us to be worried about fires considering how dry the year has been," Bumbaco said. "It does seem like our typical summer weather is here earlier than usual."