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Climatologist urges farmers to be aware of fire weather conditions

A climatologist says weather preparedness for farmers and ranchers goes beyond monitoring severe storms.

Brian Fuchs with the National Drought Mitigation Center says warm and dry conditions in the spring can lead to an increased risk of wildfires.

“All that dormant, dead, dried out vegetation that’s there, and then you couple that with the wind that we’ve been getting here over the last couple weeks, a lot of that is definitely fuel for the fire, so to speak.”

He tells Brownfield it doesn’t take much to create a situation that gets out of hand. “Especially if you’re crossing ditches or anything like that, all it could take would be a hot muffler on a vehicle and you could have a rangeland fire break out.”

The National Weather Service says some areas of the Eastern Corn Belt have recently been under wind advisories with gusts up to 50 miles per hour.