DENVER (KDVR) — While not everyone is excited about another round of snow, the moisture is a big help when it comes to the risk of wildfires. The most recent drought map shows the Denver metro area, the foothills and the Front Range are not dealing with any drought conditions.
“Technically, Denver is out of drought conditions, and a big helpful thing for that is the amount of snow that we’ve picked up in the last couple of months,” said Pinpoint Weather Meteorologist Travis Michels. “We’ve seen over three feet of snow just this winter, which is above average, but it’s also great because it saturates quickly into the soil.”
Rewind to February 2021 and you’d see a much different picture. A fire in Cherry Creek State Park torched more than 240 acres the day after Super Bowl Sunday. At the same time, an even larger fire was burning at Bear Creek Lake Park in Lakewood. South Metro Fire Rescue responded to both.
“A pretty dangerous day that triggered evacuations and had some challenging firefighter conditions,” Eric Hurst, with South Metro Fire Rescue, said about February 2021. “By contrast, we look at what it’s like outside right now: We need snowplows, people were debating about closing schools. It’s a completely different picture this year than what we’ve dealt with in the past.”
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“This time of year could kind of go either way. Sometimes we have wildland fires along the front range in February, and we’ve just been lucky so far this year we’ve been getting regular precipitation,” Hurst said.
While the snow is helping with saturation going into the spring and summer months, Hurst said we’re not totally out of the woods when it comes to wildfires.
“Even in times when we’re at normal or even above normal for precipitation for the year, if we go through a couple-week span when we haven’t had regular precipitation, and the grasses are dry and we have low humidity, and we add some wind to that, we can still have pretty high fire danger,” Hurst said.
Hurst said they expect the recent snowfall will have a positive impact for a while when it comes to fire danger.