Officials predict another bad year in Kansas for wildfires

This could be another bad year for wildfires in Kansas.

That warning issued earlier this week comes after back to back years of the worst wildfires in state history, which burned thousands of acres and destroyed homes, cattle, fences and powerlines.

“We’re setting up for about the same thing again this spring,” Comanche County Fire Chief Greg Ellis said. “Everybody’s nervous.”

The central and southern Plains, including western and southern Kansas, all of Oklahoma and most of Texas, faces an elevated threat of wildfires through April, according to Kansas State University scientists and a government organization that assesses risks.

Lots of rain from April through September prompted the heavy growth of brush and grass resulting in “large to significant fuel loads” across the region, said Chip Redmond, a meteorologist with Kansas State University’s Mesonet.

Abnormally dry weather west of Wichita over the past three months, along with dry air masses, sunshine and breezy conditions are rapidly depleting any remaining moisture and drying out grass and brush, he said.

Mid to long-range forecasts call for more dry weather.

“We are setting the stage for some large fires in Kansas,” Redmond said in a prepared statement issued with a report from the National Interagency Coordination Center.

Fire season has already started in some parts of the state, officials in southwest Kansas say.

“We’re already having some dangerous fires,” said Troy Wolf, Southwest Trustee for the Kansas Fire Fighters Association, who lives in Johnson near the Colorado border. “It’s going to look pretty rough” this year.

Last March more than 700,000 acres burned in 21 counties. More than 20 homes were destroyed, Ashland and Protection and areas around Hutchinson were evacuated and one person was killed.

In 2016, the Anderson Creek wildfire erupted in Oklahoma and spread north into Kansas burning 400,000 acres near Medicine Lodge. Until the past two years, a 2011 fire that burned 38,000 acres in Wolf’s home county of Haskell held the record for largest wildfire in state history.

All of Kansas is now below normal for precipitation, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The extent varies from abnormally dry to severe drought.

While dry winters are not uncommon for Kansas, officials say it will take a wet March and April to diminish the wildfire threat. That won’t happen if the Climate Prediction Center outlook for the next three months proves accurate.

All but the eastern quarter of Kansas will be drier than normal, the latest outlook projects.

“There’s places with waist-high grass again,” Ellis said. “If we could get a foot of wet snow to weigh that stuff down, it wouldn’t be nearly as bad.”

When the grass is that tall, however, flames can race across a prairie, he said.

The February through March period is typically very dry in Kansas, assistant state climatologist Mary Knapp said. Any precipitation that does occur will only have short-term impacts on the dried out vegetation until the arrival of spring rains.

“The biggest concern during the next few months will be the occurrence of very warm days,” Knapp said. “These are typically associated with very dry air and high winds in advance of a strong storm system. Kansas’ largest wildfires are usually dependent on the shifting winds and the lack of moisture associated with these systems.”

Such systems are common in late winter and early spring in Kansas, she said. Volatile fire seasons are becoming common, too.

“It is what it is,” Ellis said. “We live in Kansas. That’s kind of the way it’s going to be — for now, anyway.”

This story was originally published January 16, 2018 at 9:07 PM with the headline "Officials predict another bad year in Kansas for wildfires."