Summer is in full swing in Missoula with temperatures rising, but according Jordan Koppen from the DNRC Missoula will remain at ‘Very High’ Fire Danger Level this week.

 

"Things are still extremely dry," Koppen said. "Obviously we're not in extreme right now. We're at 'very High fire danger we're going to stay that way for the here for the rest of the week its all determined on how much moisture is in the fuels at this time and and at this time it hasn't gone beyond what we call the 90th percentile which is when we kind of start to put on restrictions

Although the fire danger level isn’t extreme, extreme fires can still occur, and Koppen says most of this year’s fires for the southwestern region were human caused.

"You could kind of split it down the middle," Koppen said. "I would say that the human caused fires, a few of those are going to be campfires and definitely the debris burning fires. The lightning fires, we haven't had a lot of those in the past. Usually that's how it works, a few more human caused fires than lightning. We're trying to prevent those from happening if we can defeat that human caused fire, that's our goal, you know that what we're trying to do."

It has been a while since Missoula has gone a year without the fire danger level reaching “extreme.” Last year, fire danger was raised to extreme before the 4th of July.

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