Alaska fire season lagging behind preseason predictions

A lack of winter snow, early season ignitions, and a hot weather forecast had Alaskans bracing for another busy fire season. But, so far, it’s lagging behind preseason predictions.

With last year’s hyper-active wildfire season fresh on their minds, and a nearly non-existent winter throughout much of Alaska, fire officials were expecting the worst this year.

“Everybody was gearing up to an early season, but it’s kind of moderated because we’ve been getting some nice cycles of rain and some cold weather after a few days of nice, sunny weather,” Beth Ipsen, a spokesperson for the BLM Alaska Fire Service, said.

Ipsen cautions that it’s still only June, and things could change before the end of the fire season.

So far this year, there have been 266 reported fires. That’s about half the number reported at this point last year.

While the amount of human-caused fires are about the same, Ipsen says many more ignitions last season came from lightning:

“There was one day where there was like 11,000 strikes and 62 starts – that happened on June 22 of last year,” she said. “We didn’t have that this year. We got like 1,400 strikes yesterday, but they were accompanied with quite a bit of rain.”

This year, only 23 fires have been caused by lightning, compared with last year, when lightning sparked more than 270.

There are 29 active fires in Alaska, but the Tetlin River Fire south of Tok is the only one crews are still working on.

Despite the slower-than-anticipated fire season, Ipsen says it’s not over, and urges Alaskans to be cautious, especially with campers soon celebrating the the Fourth of July weekend.

“Just be careful with your campfires, that’s kind of our biggest worry at this point,” Ipsen said. “Just make sure that you have those campfires out when you hit your tent at night, put your fire out; when you leave the campground, put your fire out.”

More than 90 percent of fires reported so far this year are suspected to be human caused.