October is typically peak prescribed fire season in Washington because rainfall early in the month ends wildfire season and provides the perfect window to conduct controlled, prescribed burns before the rainy season. Due to the unseasonably warm and dry conditions that continued throughout October this year, the window kept getting smaller and smaller.
Following the light rain in mid-October, The Nature Conservancy, Upper Kittitas Fuels Crew, and local partners caught a break and conducted a prescribed burn on Sunday, October 23rd on TNC’s Central Cascades Forest Lands on the Cle Elum Ridge. The burn was part of Central Washington’s prescribed fire Training Exchange (TREX) program, and brought together firefighters from multiple upper Kittitas County Fire Districts, Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Yakima Training Center, Mount Adams Resource Stewards, and The Nature Conservancy to burn ~40 acres of forestland, adding to 300 acres of prescribed burns that have been conducted near Roslyn since 2017 as a part of TREX.
