Fire danger in Missoula jumped up to moderate this week, June 13.

According to Chris Johnson from the Missoula county fire protection association, recent rains have helped lead to a slower fire season than last year.

"We've had a lot of precipitation this year, 2016, more normal levels of precipitation, more normal levels of precipitation than we've had in the past two years," Johnson said. "At this time last year, we were already approaching high fire danger."

The fire protection association voted to increase the fire danger level to moderate after two fires this past week.

"The two fires that we had last week, one on the Lolo and one on the Bitterroot that actually moved out and made a pretty good push in the woods to three acres. Kind of prompted us to say, look the energy release components have us in moderate, we had a couple fires that got a little big on us even with initial attack within just a few hours,  let's make a move to moderate to let folks know."

Johnson says burning is still allowed and there are no major limitations with the increased fire danger level. He says he expects the fire danger will likely increase to high sometime in the next two weeks.

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