Cape Fear region facing moderate to severe drought conditions
Spring wildfire season has arrived across Cape Fear and it’s coming in hot. As WWAY’s Charles McKeller explains with dry air settling in and gusty winds expected to ramp up Saturday, fire danger across the region is climbing fast.
Saturday’s gusty winds are expected to dry out wooded areas like this one here at Greenfield Lake raising the potential for wildfires.
Dry conditions, windy conditions, lack of rain, you’re pretty much going to get textbook fire weather,” said Jackson.
Public Information Officer Philip Jackson with the North Carolina forestry service explains why fire danger is so high.
“To exacerbate that even further, we really haven’t, we’ve been trending in this drought direction, uh, really since early fall. We haven’t seen any substantial rainfall to kind of reset the water tables as well,” said Jackson.
Jackson said burning debris in backyard human activity and carelessness is responsible for 99% of forest fires.
“They will go and work on other things throughout the day while that pile burns. They’ll mow the grass, they’ll run up the street, run some errands,” said Jackson.
Here’s another familiar site in the Cape Fear area. You can see where the water was at this pond at Empie Park and where it is Friday.
“Stream flows are definitely low,” said Albertin.
Klaus Albertin is the chair with the NC Drought Management Advisory, and he says a bad situation could soon get worse.
“You can start seeing the municipal demand pick up, so we are starting in that phase of, yeah, really kind of more concerning, uh levels of drought,” said Albertin.
This map provided by the Department of Environmental Quality shows extreme drought conditions in red and here in the cape fear the conditions are moderate to severe.
Drought couldn’t come at a worse time, for nurseries like the busy Bloomin Crazy plant nursery in Leland.
Tommy Harrelson says you can conserve by watering in the morning when it’s cooler and prepping new planting areas with mulch.
“The double, triple shredded hardwood is going to last the longest,” said Harrelson.
