Cape Fear region facing moderate to severe drought conditions
NC (WWAY)–Spring wildfire season has arrived across Cape Fear and it’s coming in hot.
Most of the trees at Greenfield Lake in Wilmington are beginning to turn green as their leaves form, but there’s been little rain this spring, and that poses a big concern.
“Dry conditions, windy conditions, lack of rain, you’re pretty much going to get textbook fire weather,” said Philip Jackson with the North Carolina Forestry Service. He 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.
He also says the combination of dry fuels and weather conditions, support rapid fire spread and ignition.
“We’ve been lacking the rain so far this spring. Additionally, as we have these warm and cold fronts move in, we’re going to see windier conditions, and we’re also going to see the humidity levels fluctuate,” 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.
In a forest near Pender County, several plants are brittle, old, and easy to break. One spark can cause a disastrous event.
“Eastern North Carolina is subject to large wildfires as well. There’s a lot of farmlands, and a lot of those blocks of land, you’re looking at thousands of acres to hundreds of thousands of acres,” said Jackson. “If you were to get a lightning strike, it might take several days before anybody even knows it’s burning, and that’s when we tend to see these larger wildfires.”
“Stream flows are definitely low,” said Klaus Albertin. He is the chair with the North Carolina 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 more concerning levels of drought,” said Albertin.
In a map provided by the Department of Environmental Quality shows extreme drought conditions in red, and in the WWAY coverage, several counties are in the severe draught level.
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.
For counties that aren’t under a red flag warning, fire danger is still critical. While open burning is permitted during a red flag, it is not advised. The North Carolina Forest Service is urging you to postpone all outdoor burning.
