By Josephine Peterson, Tacoma News Tribune

Get ready for more smoke and foul air this summer. This year’s rate of wildfires has been record-breaking for Washington thus far, and it could get worse.

The average wildfire season in Washington starts in July and ends in September, but the state has already seen more fires in the first half of the year than ever before.

Washington has seen more wildfires in 2021 than the first six months of any year on record since the states’ comprehensive tracking began in 2005, according to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources.

The state has responded to 564 fires this year, 137 of which have been on the West side of the Cascades. That’s a 56 percent increase from 2020, when the state responded to 352 fires by June 30, and a 78 percent increase from the five-year average of 387, according to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources.

Washington Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz said current trends across the state in development, fires and human behavior all point to a bad wildfire season. More predicted fire would mean more smoke for the Pacific Northwest region.

“When you add in the context that we have hotter, drier conditions, we now also have more people living amongst the forest, recreating on them, then you’re going to see more fires,” she said.

In 2020, working during the coronavirus pandemic, the state deployed fire-suppression aircraft with water or extinguishing chemicals instead of firefighter crews at the start of wildfire season.

Fighting a fire from the air costs more than ground crews, but the state felt it was a safer option than firefighters congregating in groups, said DNR spokeperson Thomas Kyle-Milward. The costs for 2020 wildfire season have not been finalized yet, he said, adding that reimbursements from the federal government likely offset much of the increased expense.

While the number of fires has increased, the state’s more proactive attack led to fewer acres burned last summer, he added.

In 2020, 655 acres overseen by the DNR burned — the lowest recorded amount since 2011. The agency controls 13 million acres across Washington. Overall in 2020, 813,282 acres burned statewide, almost all of it on federal land, according to the Northwest Coordination Center, which monitors all wildfire activity in the region.

By comparison, 2021 has seen 1,340 acres of DNR-controlled land burned. In its seasonal outlook report, the Northwest Coordination Center predicts almost all of the Northwest region “is expected to experience significant fire potential that is above average into September before returning to normal by October.”

ABNORMALLY DRY SEASON

Twenty-nine of Washington’s 39 counties are under a drought advisory. Most are east of the Cascades or on the Olympic Peninsula.

“That leaves a very significant reason why we should all be very, very concerned,” Franz said of the drought season.

Washington state climatologist Nick Bond said the state, especially Eastern Washington, is at an elevated risk for wildfires after such a dry spring.

Washington’s temperate summers aren’t full of rain like the winters, Bond said, so residents shouldn’t expect to make up the rainfall before wildfire season worsens.

Department of Ecology drought coordinator Jeff Marti said Washington is living in two realities this summer, both of which could lead to bad wildfires. The Puget Sound counties that rely on snowpack are doing better than those that rely on lowland rivers.

The heavier snowfall that melts into rivers flowing to the Puget Sound is helping King, Pierce, Snohomish and Thurston counties get through the drought, while lowland rivers have become more like streams, Marti said.

Even so, all of the Evergreen State is seeing less rain. March through May was the second driest such period for Washington state since 1895, the Department of Ecology said.

East of the Cascades, spring saw 30 percent or less of normal precipitation rates from March through May. Some lower elevations, like Walla Walla and Yakima, have seen as little as 20 percent of their normal precipitation rates, Bond said.

Less water leads to stress on trees.

“The tree becomes weaker and less able to defend itself against insects and pathogens and becomes more vulnerable to disease,” Marti said. “Trees eventually die, and then it becomes fuel for wildfires.”