Above Normal Fire Season in Southern Arizona

Forest Service officials in southern Arizona are bracing for another bad fire season.

Forest Service spokesman Heidi Schewel told the Arizona Daily Star that the agency is looking at an above normal season with the potential for significant fires.

If they come it will be the second year in a row that the southern half of the state has seen major fires. Three huge conflagrations burned in the state last year, and 365,000 acres of the Coronado National Forest alone were blackened.

Schewel says unusually hot, dry, windy weather is expected in the coming months. Some areas have an abundance of fine fuels like grasses and weeds that ignite easily when dry.

And some forest areas remain exceptionally dry because winter rains that soaked other areas mostly passed them by.