{"id":24363,"date":"2024-12-18T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-18T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/despite-predictions-southwest-colorado-had-an-unusually-quiet-wildfire-season\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:53:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:53:06","slug":"despite-predictions-southwest-colorado-had-an-unusually-quiet-wildfire-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/despite-predictions-southwest-colorado-had-an-unusually-quiet-wildfire-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite predictions, Southwest Colorado had an unusually quiet wildfire season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A firefighter uses a drip torch to ignite fuels during a prescribed burn on the Vallecito-Piedra unit of the Columbine Ranger District. (Courtesy of San Juan National Forest)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

As spring rolled into summer, fire officials in Southwest Colorado were preparing for an average wildfire season. <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAverage could be a very active fire season,\u201d Toby Cook, deputy fire staff officer with the San Juan National Forest, said in May.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a complex and difficult thing to predict, but fire managers were ready to stay busy in Southwest Colorado. And then, consistent monsoon moisture arrived.<\/p>\n

Just 37 fires started on the San Juan National Forest this year. That\u2019s a little over 12% of the 300 fires that have, on average, started each year over the last five years. That statistic includes trees ignited by lighting that quickly burn out or are put out by firefighters without leaving any impact on the landscape.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were way below the average,\u201d said Pat Seekins, fuels program manager for the SJNF. \u201cSo, (it was) pretty slow.\u201d<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s climate scientists noted that the Western Slope had a wet summer. <\/a>For large swathes of Southwest Colorado, summer 2024 was in the top 35 wettest summers since 1895.<\/p>\n

\"Prescribed
Prescribed fires consume fuel during a burn on the San Juan National Forest. The forest burned 9,500 acres with prescribed fire this year. (Courtesy of San Juan National Forest)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The wet summer months, preceded by a wet winter and spring, set the lands managed by the SJNF up for a mellow fire season.<\/p>\n

That was not the case across the rest of the Western United States.<\/p>\n

Nearly 55,000 fires started this year nationwide and burned over 8.5 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"For
For large swathes of Southwest Colorado, summer 2024 was in the top 35 wettest summers since 1895, according to the Colorado Climate Center. (Courtesy of Colorado Climate Center)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cThe Pacific Northwest, Oregon, Washington, California and Nevada, Idaho, had very long and extreme fire seasons, and so most of us were out West, helping the national fire cause in different various positions,\u201d Seekins said.<\/p>\n

He runs incident management teams on larger fire operations and spent three weeks in Oregon and two weeks in Wyoming, in addition to time in Idaho and the southeastern U.S. doing hurricane response.<\/p>\n

\"Firefighters
Firefighters use drip torches on a prescribed fire in Fosset Gulch this fall. (Courtesy of San Juan National Forest)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

When resources weren\u2019t out of state, firefighters were nonetheless able to keep busy at home. In total, the Forest Service treated over 25,000 acres of SJNF land to benefit forest health, protect watersheds and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire in the 2024 fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, 2023.<\/p>\n

Of those, 9,500 acres were set ablaze to fulfill prescriptions; 7,100 acres were treated mechanically; and the forest claimed 8,700 \u201cbeneficial acres\u201d of four unintentionally ignited wildfires, such as the Spruce Creek Fire<\/a> which burned 5,700 acres northeast<\/a> of Dolores in May.<\/p>\n

\"A
A prescribed burn unit near Sauls Creek, east of Bayfield, in 2023 before it burned. (Courtesy of San Juan National Forest)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A
A prescribed burn unit near Sauls Creek, east of Bayfield, in 2024 after it burned. (Courtesy of San Juan National Forest)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

That\u2019s a decent step toward the 30,000 to 40,000 acre-benchmark that Seekins has previously stated as a rough goal<\/a> for annual treatment on the SJNF. In the 2023 fiscal year, the forest treated 26,500 acres, although a significant chunk of that \u2013 over 15,000 acres \u2013 was treated mechanically.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a pretty good year,\u201d Seekins said.<\/p>\n

Wet conditions, which helps fuel growth, followed by what is predicted to be a warmer and drier winter <\/a>could mean heightened fire risk come spring.<\/p>\n

But, Seekins pointed out, if this year\u2019s outcomes taught any lesson, it\u2019s that fire season is difficult to predict.<\/p>\n

rschafir@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Nearly
Nearly 55,000 fires started this year nationwide and burned over 8.5 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. (Courtesy of San Juan National Forest)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ignitions on San Juan National Forest were just 12% of the five-year average <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[350,28,199,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-fire","tag-headlines","tag-san-juan-national-forest","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78505,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24363\/revisions\/78505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24363"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}