Lack of March and April Showers Brings Early Fire Season to O.C.

SILVERADO CANYON — The hillsides along Orange County’s southern canyons reflect what has been an extraordinarily arid spring. The fields are brown, covered with stiff, sere grasses that make the still-green bushes and shrubs seem to float like clouds.

This is early May, traditionally the start of wildfire season in Orange County, but in truth the season began much earlier this year.

For the first time since weather records have been kept, no measurable rain fell in the county in March and April. That means the annual spring drought actually began during the winter.

Perversely, that means it is too dry here to burn safely, said Orange County Fire Battalion Chief Herb Jewell. So a “prescribed burn” planned for this week--a controlled fire in Silverado Canyon aimed at improving habitats and removing potential wildfire flash spots--was canceled. It won’t be rescheduled until conditions improve, which could simply be a matter of a few days of marine layers, which would let the tinder-dry grasses and twigs absorb enough moisture from the air to retard ignition.

As it is, the hillsides are covered with dead grass and drying bushes and shrubs--”fuel,” in firefighter jargon--about a month earlier than usual.

“We’re going to have an early fire season, maybe a little more severe than normal,” said Orange County Fire Capt. Rick Finnerty. “It all depends on what the weather does this summer.”

Blame the soggy holiday season, and the beautiful weather we’ve had since late January.

Usually Orange County’s rainy season flows and ebbs in a gentle cycle, beginning with showers in October and November, steady Pacific downpours in December and January, then a slow tapering off through March and April.

This year, heavy rains began Oct. 30, continued through mid-January--feeding lush growth among wildflowers, grasses and brush--and then stopped abruptly.

“It was like someone had turned the spigot off,” said Finnerty.

The result is what Jewell described as a bumper “crop of fuels.”

“We were seeing as early as mid-March the curing of the fuel, or the browning up of the fuel,” said Jewell.

Oddly, total rainfall this season is above average, at 14.41 inches, compared with a normal rainfall of 12.34 inches.

Yet most of that rain fell early, with nearly an inch recorded on Oct. 30 alone, then continuing with 2.29 inches in November and 4.87 inches in December, compared with averages of 1.3 inches and 1.7 inches, respectively. The pace continued with 5.2 inches of rain falling in January, compared with an average of 3.08 inches.

After that, virtually nothing. The reason has been a stable jet stream consistently pushing to the north storm systems that should have tracked across Southern California, said Wes Etheredge, a meteorologist for WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts to The Times.

“It’s going to be sunny skies and unseasonably warm through the next week,” Etheredge said. “Things are not looking good for any sort of change.”

What’s good weather for barbecues is bad for fire threats. Already, fire-danger indicators are high in the Cleveland National Forest.

At the same time, areas that haven’t burned for a number of years have a store of dead grasses, bushes, and fallen branches and twigs. The more of that dead material that exists in an area, the higher the chances of fire spreading.

Right now, Finnerty said, the brush is getting too dry, too soon.

“It’s not critical yet,” Finnerty said, “but I’ll bet a dime to a dollar it’s going to be critical by late June or July.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Burning Season

The beginning of the fire season emphasizes the need for property maintenance to help prevent blazes. Five things you can do:

* Clear flammable vegetation and combustible growth near home

* Remove dead branches, leaves and needles from all plants

* Prune lower limbs of tall trees to within 6 feet of ground

* Plant nonflammable trees, ornamental shrubbery and ground cover

* Clean leaves and needles from roof and gutters

Source: Times reports