Lightning Storm Near Clearwater Junction Sparks Fire, More May Follow

A major storm system rolled through Missoula county Sunday evening. Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation Spokesman Jordan Koppen says at least one fire was sparked by that storm.

"We did have one fire start or a smoke that we received out by the Helmville area," Koppen said. "Usually it starts out pretty small, so they’re going to check it out. I’m sure there will probably be a couple more that start over the next couple of days. We are going to put up our spotter plane today and run our protection to see what we can find."

Koppen says that a fire can wait a while after a rain before it flares up in dryer weather. Fire officials decided yesterday to keep Missoula County under a Moderate fire danger warning.

By this time last year, Missoula was at high or extreme fire danger but low temperatures have kept fire danger low as well.

"We established today that we’re going to stay at moderate for the time being," Koppen said. "We're not saying that there isn’t still fire danger out there though. We're still trying to urge the public to stay safe with any ignitions sources that we have. We’re supposed to be running into some warmer weather and some dryer weather too so it could bump up to high with in the next couple of weeks."

We did have one fire start or a smoke that we received out by the helmville areas usually it starts it normally starts pretty small so they’re going out to check it out I’m sure there’ll probably be a couple more that start over the next couple of days We are going to put up out spotter plane and see what we can find"