C.O. wildfire season forecast: It could be record setting

A low snowpack and drought conditions in parts of the state have fire officials keeping a close eye on how things develop this wildfire season.

According to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center, the state saw a poor snowpack in April, and parts of Central Oregon could see drought conditions into the summer months.

Earlier this year, Gov. Kate Brown declared a drought emergency for Grant and Klamath counties because of the low snowpack.

Lisa Clark, field manager for the Bureau of Land Management, told NewsChannel 21 on Wednesday they expect a busy fire season, similar to last year.

“What the predictions are showing right now is June will be a little bit of normal, but actually as we move to July and August, we are expecting to be hotter and drier than a normal year,” Clark said.

Last year’s wildfire season was one of the costliest in Oregon, as firefighters put out 2,000 wildfires across the state.

The cost to fight those blazes tallied $454 million, much higher than the $53 million spent the previous year.

The largest wildfires in the state were the Chetco Bar Fire, which charred thousands of acres near Brookings, and the Eagle Creek Fire, which burned a large area in the Columbia River Gorge.

Clark said one of the benefits from this past fire season was creating better communication with different agencies. She said that communication will continue into this year’s fire season.

“What are we going to be seeing are changes in the way that we are able to provide the public with smoke information, health information that’s going to be coming in with just our general wildfire reporting,” Clark said.

Prescribed burns to keep future fires from burning as intensely have been underway for a few weeks. The Deschutes National Forest is planning prescribed burns south of Bend and east of Sunriver on Thursday and Friday.