Summer is on the way, but the Interior appears to have missed the memo. After an unusually wet, chilly start to June — including a frost advisory issued right in the middle of planting season — you might start to think the region is out of the woods where wildfires are concerned.
Rick Thoman, a climate specialist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Preparedness, said that’s not the case.
“We are definitely not in the clear, given the forecast that we have,” he said.
He said low temperatures and slow-to-melt snowpack prevented the boreal forest from drying out as quickly as last year, when wildfires destroyed homes in Healy, threatened neighborhoods in Fairbanks, and filled the valleys with smoke that lasted for weeks.
But that all could change, with higher temperatures and storms in the near forecast.
“We are now moving into kind of the heart of thunderstorm season,” Thoman said. “Lightning started fires in most years — accounting for the vast majority of the wildfire acreage burned in the state.”
Thoman said it’s unlikely that the Interior will have a record high wildfire season this year. But he cautions that a quiet start is no guarantee of a quiet finish.
“The poster child here is 2023, which was very low wildfire-area-burned and very low-lightning, right up until late July,” he said. “Then there was a burst of thunderstorms, and it set off all kinds of wildfires in the central Interior.”
Evan Kutta, a science and operations officer with the National Weather Service in Fairbanks, said other conditions factor into their wildfire concerns. With just over a week to go before the summer solstice, Kutta says the extra sunlight and heat make a difference.
“Those longer days also help dry out the fuels that that lightning could spark and ignite, resulting in that wildfire potential,” he said.
Kutta said the worst of the lightning danger begins Friday afternoon and will last into the weekend. Fire managers are keeping an especially close eye on Delta Junction and the upper Tanana Valley, where conditions are drier and windier. Temperatures might also creep into the 80s throughout the Interior in the coming days.
“But the light at the end of the tunnel is that we're actually expecting some fairly widespread rain early next week,” Kutta said. “And that should also help bring temperatures back down, possibly into the 60s again.”
Kutta urged Interior residents to pay careful attention to burn regulations and completely douse campfires before leaving them unattended.
He also cautioned residents about the other obvious hazard to humans the storms will bring.
“Lightning is one of the most dangerous things that thunderstorms produce,” Kutta said. “There are people that die every year from getting struck by lightning. So, we want to make sure that people go indoors when thunder roars.”
Kutta said thunderstorms are most likely to happen in the afternoon or evening, so outdoor recreators should get an early start and be prepared to head back if they see ominous clouds building.