If you live in southern Idaho you likely won't see the catastrophic fires the area experienced last year.
State and federal agencies came together to give predictions Tuesday on what the state's wildfire outlook this summer could be like.
Ed Delgado manages predictive services at the National Interagency Fire Center. He says there’s a big difference between fires expected in the mountains and those in the desert this year.
“Down in the grasslands things are a lot different than they were last year,” Delgado says. “That doesn’t mean we won’t have fires, we’re just not going to have the near record breaking fires we had last year. The forest lands are extremely dry and there’s the potential with all the fuels we have up there for those same kind of fires we had last year.”
Delgado says central Idaho will have above normal potential for big fires beginning in July and through August. A spokesman for the Boise National Forest says restrictions on camp fires and charcoal grills will likely start after July 4. Those restrictions are expected to be more widespread than in past years. Last year, most of Idaho’s worst fires were started by people.
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