Washington firefighters battle 91 wildfires in a week. What does that mean for summer?

April is usually known for showers, but this year, Washington has seen more wildfires than rain, officials said.

The Department of Natural Resources reported fighting 91 wildfires in one week this month, according to a tweet from DNR.

“This year is already heating up,” Hilary Franz, commissioner of public lands, wrote in a Facebook post. “We have already been out on a number of wildfires here in Washington and it’s only April.”

Franz told McClatchy News that wildfire seasons have been starting earlier and lasting longer for the last six years.

“The hot, dry conditions this early [are] only going to dry the landscape out even longer and more intensely,” Franz said. “We are likely to have another potentially devastating fire season ahead of us.”

The department issued new burn restrictions due to “rising fire danger” in the South Puget Sound, Northwest, Pacific Cascade and Northeast regions, a DNR news release from April 16 said. The restrictions will extend through the next week and “DNR is asking the public to avoid conducting outdoor debris burns as much as possible,” according to the release.

“The restrictions are expected to be lifted after spring rains allow fresh grasses to grow that haven’t dried out,” the department said.

As dry, warming weather continues along with gusty winds, fire danger in the state will continue to rise.

“Fire season is upon us, and we’re asking the public to not take any chances,” Franz said in the release. “Strong winds and dry weather leave us vulnerable to fast-spreading wildfires, and we cannot protect our firefighters, forests and communities without the public’s help. We need everyone to avoid starting an outdoor fire and, if they do, to fully extinguish it and have a hose ready if the fire escapes outside the burn area.”

Franz posted on Facebook that “it’s never too early to start preparing your yard and home.”

“Now is the time to limb up your trees, clean out your gutters and mow your grass,” she wrote.

Recently, fires popped up in Auburn, Eatonville and Lacey, officials said.

The Green Valley Fire in Auburn started Sunday afternoon and has burned 50 acres as of Tuesday, according to a news release from the Washington State Fire Marshal. It threatened homes and prompted level 2 evacuations Monday, the fire marshal said.

The cause is under investigation.

On Friday, Graham Fire and Rescue and South Pierce Fire and Rescue responded to an eight-acre fire in Eatonville, Q13 reported. It took crews two and a half hours to tame the flames, although it was not completely contained, according to the news station.

A small brush fire sparked Monday afternoon in Lacey from a burn pile, Fire District 3 tweeted. Firefighters were able to contain it before it could move up a wooded hillside, the tweet read.

The state mobilized fire assistance to support local firefighters in battling both blazes.

Franz said last season was relatively quiet up to July, but “it really broke out and became catastrophic ... by Labor Day, when those hot, dry conditions had continued for a significant time period.”

“Hurricane force winds” and the unique challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic in the fall of 2020 made that “fire storm” especially difficult, according to Franz.

While past seasons haven’t seen such significant storms so late in the year, 2014, 2015 and 2018 demonstrated the devastation that comes along with hot, dry weather coupled with strong winds.

“We didn’t necessarily have a Labor Day fire storm, we just had a long fire storm — weeks on end of just catastrophic fire after catastrophic fire after catastrophic fire and we are right now predicting that, given the hot, dry conditions that we’re already experiencing this early in the spring and we don’t see it letting up, we’re going to have a challenging fire season that will likely continue to ramp up and then get quite significant in late August and September,” Franz said.

Franz has been pushing for more funding from the state legislature to fight wildfires as seasons get drier and more destructive.

“More than ever, we need consistent and reliable funding to reduce these catastrophic wildfires, save our communities and lives and prevent the Evergreen State turning charcoal black,” she wrote in a Facebook post April 15.

Local fire officials echoed Franz’s concerns that as summers on the west side of the Cascades become hotter and drier, fire season will look more like the east side, according to KOMO.

“What we used to think of as that fire season typically on the east side of the state where it’s hot and dry all the time, has really kind of changed as the west side experiences warmer and drier summers,” Captain Joe Root with Puget Sound Fire told KOMO.

This story was originally published April 20, 2021 at 12:39 PM.