Yesterday, initial attack was light with 46 new fires reported nationwide, including three large incidents. Firefighters are currently working to contain 33 large fires across the country. There are over 10,000 personnel assigned to incidents, including 161 crews, 435 engines, and 65 helicopters.
Year-to-date, 56,651 fires have burned more than 8.5 million acres, 125% of the 10-year average number of fires and 146% of the average acres burned for this date.
No other country in the world has a public land system like the United States. Please do your part in protecting it. Remember and teach campfire safety to your children. Make sure campfires are dead out by using dirt and water when stirring the coals. Use a shovel to help properly extinguish your campfire and keep it nearby, just in case. Store matches and lighters where curious children can’t get them. Carefully extinguish all smoking materials. Together, we can prevent unwanted wildfires.
Weather
The ridge of high pressure over the southeast will continue to weaken, but temperatures will still rise into the mid to upper 90s this afternoon from the lower Mississippi Valley north through Tennessee. Relative humidity will bottom out near 25-30% again today as well. In the Pacific Northwest, a trough aloft will bring breezy west winds gusting to 25 mph to cascade gaps and relative humidity will fall to 15-30% again this afternoon east of the Cascades. Further south, slightly above average temperatures are expected across northern California today along with breezy overnight winds and poor relative humidity recovery after RH falls to 10-20% this afternoon. Isolated mixed wet and dry thunderstorms will develop this afternoon across southern and western Nevada including across the Sierra Front. Isolated thunderstorms will also develop across the lower Mississippi Valley and across west Texas today, bring gusty outflow winds with them. Conditions trend drier across the desert southwest, though high temperatures remain mostly below normal. Today will be the driest day of the week across the southern Front Range with relative humidity dropping into the teens.
