This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

After a snowy winter and a wet spring, Utah — at this point — can look forward to an average wildfire season.

Winter left a decent snowpack in Utah's mountains, while March storms brought higher-than-average rainfall to northern Utah. That is good news for Utah's timber and grasses, with the latter factoring a great deal into Utah's wildfires.

"A really important driver for fire season is the grasses, which depend on the springtime precipitation," said Nanette Hosenfeld, a Utah meteorologist for the Bureau of Land Management. Grasses dry out much sooner than trees, providing the first, ample fuels for fires. And after a wet spring, "we've seen great grass growth at this point. [It is] normal to above normal for this time of year."

Whether firefighters find themselves busy this summer depends on if May and June heat up, drying out those lush grasses and turning them into dead fuel for hungry flames.

"It really depends on what happens in the next month or two," Hosenfeld said. "If we dry out significantly and quickly, we will have a lot of dry grass to burn."

As of late April, the climate forecast was for a slightly above-normal amount of rainfall, with the weakening El NiƱo, and about normal temperatures. Even if the rain clouds shut off their taps immediately, "we would have a nice green-up to carry us through the spring," said Jason Curry, spokesman for the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands.

"For the next few weeks, we're confident that this moisture pattern is going to remain in place and carry us through the middle of May," Curry said.

Per usual, southwestern Utah will likely see larger and more frequent fires than most of the rest of the state, since the area gets less rain.

The National Interagency Fire Center, which predicts fire behavior and monitors firefighting resources, was expecting an "above-normal potential" for wildfires in the southwest part of the state by June and July, according to an April 1 report.

Hosenfeld cautioned that it's "always challenging" to forecast the weather months in advance.

But Curry doesn't expect Utah to see "the extreme cases" it did in years like 2012. That year was a record-setter, with an explosion of dangerous blazes in the summer months that caused evacuations, destroyed homes and burned more than 394,000 acres.

That was followed by quieter fire seasons, including last year's, which might make even an average year look like an uptick.

The 2015 season was one of the mildest in a long time, thanks to a wet May and June. Just 10,200 acres burned that year, according to data from the Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands. That is the lowest total since at least 2001.

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