Boulder County is heading into spring with dry fuels, frequent red flag days and conditions that have already prompted public safety power shutoffs this year. A record-breaking March heatwave, collapsing snowpack and unusually early melt have only intensified concerns, pushing conditions into what is typically not seen until early summer.
For fire crews, this isn’t a one-off anomaly. It’s part of a longer shift toward earlier, longer and more unpredictable fire seasons.
We spoke with Boulder County Assistant Fire Manager Dustin Blair about what crews are seeing on the ground, how current conditions compare to past years and what residents should keep in mind as fire risk builds.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
So are we expecting a bad fire year?
It’s always our expectation on the fire side of things. But as of now, unless we see some moisture, we are setting up for what could potentially be a bad fire season. If people are extremely cautious, and we don’t get a bunch of dry lightning and fires don’t start, then we don’t have a problem.
But yes, we are geared up — if we have ignition sources and everything lines up — for what could potentially be a really bad fire season.
What has this winter been like for crews on the ground doing fire suppression and mitigation?
What winter? We’ve seen very little moisture. The dead down fuel is dry. We did have decent snow last year, and a good grass crop. So it all dies, and it’s all still there.
Winter is the time to burn slash piles. I don’t remember the last time we burned, which is pretty sad. We haven’t burned at all. We’ve never not been able to burn slash piles in the mountains because of lack of snow, and that has happened this year.
So we’re definitely in some fairly uncharted territory with this dry of a winter coming into spring. All the fire departments in the county are getting very sick of having to deal with this record-dry fire weather. But that’s the job, so we do it.
How do this year’s conditions compare to what you’ve seen in the past?
We see this all the time, but not this time of year. We usually have a lot of moisture in the bank, so that when we go into the summer, we have tall green grass. It takes a lot longer to dry out, and we don’t have as long of a fire season.
Our fire season is typically in the fall here on the Front Range, when we have big storms that bring the big cold fronts and push big winds. We usually bank on having moisture on the ground to stop some of these big wind events from bringing fire danger. We don’t have that right now. So we’re going into the summer without much moisture in the bank.
Can things get drier?
I don’t know if they can. We’re already down to single-digit relative humidities, which is unbelievably dry. Our fuels are fully cured in the grass, which means they’re fully available to burn. Our 1,000-hour fuels are down to 8%. They can get lower, but it’s very ready to burn. I don’t know if we’re at peak dryness right now.
We’ve never not been able to burn slash piles in the mountains because of lack of snow, and that has happened this year.
What do Boulder County residents need to be aware of as we head into the spring and summer?
The normal day-to-day things that people want to do, they need to be cautious with fire. So if you want to have a charcoal barbecue, make sure it’s not by any grass. If I pull over the car to look at the map or to answer the phone and I’m sitting in dry grass, turn the car off, or get out of the dry grass first. Find a place void of vegetation to park.
If you’re going out in the woods and you want to have a campfire, make sure you check with your local authority. A lot of our land in the county is Forest Service, and so folks have to go to the Forest Service sites and make sure that they understand what they can and can’t do.
Fire should be on everybody’s mind when they go out into a susceptible area when recreating. How do I get out of this place if a fire were to start? Don’t hesitate to leave if you see smoke, especially in the woods. People need to be thinking about fire until these conditions subside.
Are current conditions similar to the conditions that caused the Marshall Fire?
I think it’s tough to compare things to that. I caution myself saying anything is trending towards Marshall, because everything lines up perfectly with that. The winds were 100 miles an hour, and the window of really bad days where we have all those things lined up is pretty short. Still, on those days of alignment, we’re very, very cautious.
Should people be extremely cautious, and somewhat wary and afraid, on dry, windy days? Yes. On other days, when it’s just dry and not windy, we’re not going to see large fire growth.
What are you expecting in terms of moisture this spring?
Weather and moisture are so hard to predict. Our forecasters try their absolute best, but even they’ll tell you the models are really rough until about 24 hours out, and even then, changes happen.
Right now, there’s not a high confidence in moisture coming in at a large enough scale to highly offset what we already have for dry conditions. If we do have a monsoon, we hope it’s a big one. But in the fire world, we’re preparing like it won’t happen.
All the fire departments in the county are getting very sick of having to deal with this record-dry fire weather.
Xcel has shut off power preemptively three times since December. Has that helped prevent fires?
When it comes to the shutoffs, strictly from the fire suppression side, we have noticed that we don’t get as many starts on those days. We did have numerous trees across lines, and the fire starts just haven’t been there because the power is off. I would attribute some of that to the fact that those lines weren’t hot — they weren’t turned on.
Is there a concern that there is not going to be enough water to firefight with?
In wildland fire, we’re pretty good at pulling from random sources of water, from ponds and reservoirs. We talk with our Public Works partners, and we haven’t heard necessarily yet that we’re going to have an issue. But we’ll see late summer into the fall. That could be a different story.
The mountain pine beetle outbreak is expected to intensify this summer in dry conditions. What does that mean for fire risk?
We don’t own any land on the fire management side, so we go to our land manager, County Parks and Open Space. They’re dealing with the bark beetle. We’ll deal with the effects of the bark beetle. I’ve worked on numerous national forests. Some of them were ravaged by bark beetle. And those effects can be very long-lasting, not just immediate.
Wildfire’s the only natural disaster where we have a workforce that fights against it on the ground. We are working against the force of nature, and there’s times when we can’t do enough. We can’t do enough fire mitigation. There’s just not enough workforce. We just get people out of the way. So we’ll see. This bark beetle is going to be interesting. We could have very bad effects from it.
I encourage everyone to sign up for emergency alerts at bocoalert.org and visit Boulder’s Office of Disaster Management website for preparedness tips. City of Boulder residents can also find helpful preparedness and wildfire resilience information at the city’s “Wildfire Ready” website. Wildfire preparedness and resilience efforts are a community responsibility – Fire fighters are amazing, but this effort takes allll of us.
Most people probably don’t get the impact of this, but as a former wildland firefighter, hearing “the 1000 hour fuels are at 8% moisture already” is frankly a terrifying statement to hear in March.
Everyone should carry a fire extinguisher in their car.
The Colorado River has given us 1/4 century of warnings that the entire SW that depends on it is in peril. Thank our fossil tool drill baby drill governors and other “leaders.”