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QuickTake:
The question about this season’s wildfire outlook in Eugene and Springfield isn’t about how much rain has fallen; it’s about how quickly the moisture disappears. With ongoing uncertainty about budgets, it’s not just the risk that remains unpredictable, but also the response.
Last July, a car burning on McKenzie View Drive in North Springfield quickly spread into roadside trees and brush and crawled uphill, sending smoke over the valley. Emergency managers knocked on the doors of 15 nearby homes, telling people to evacuate. A couple of hours later, a crew stopped the fire.
But it was a close call, close to home, and if recent history repeats itself, it’s close to happening again.
“Having a wet spring does not necessarily guarantee that we will have a quiet wildfire season, and last year was a good example of that,” said Larry O’Neill, Oregon’s state climatologist who is based at Oregon State University’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.
O’Neill, a Eugene resident, recalls watching a wet spring turn into an early-season heat wave in June.
“What [the heat wave] did was it sucked all the moisture out of the ground, really quickly, like a massive evaporation event,” O’Neill said.
Rain and snow helped replenish moisture in drought-stricken landscapes last year. But it also fueled the growth of taller and denser grasses and shrubs — a seasonal renewal of vegetation called a “green-up.”
Once the plants dry out, they can become flammable. Under these conditions, even something as routine as driving or parking a vehicle can become a risk, because a hot exhaust system touching tinder-like grass can start a fire.
Oregon is coming off another unusually wet winter and spring, which help promote green-ups across the state.
The National Weather Service is forecasting a shift toward warmer, drier conditions along the West Coast, with the potential for short-term drought. This rapid transition is expected to begin in late May and continue through June. If the pattern holds into July, landscapes could be primed for significant wildfire activity in Oregon.
A fire outlook map from the National Interagency Fire Center, supported by the Department of the Interior and U.S. Forest Service, indicates above-normal fire potential across the Cascade Mountains and extending east for July.
Who will pay?
A busy wildfire season means costly fire management efforts.
The state ended the 2024 wildfire season owing more than $200 million to firefighters and contractors, triggering a special legislative session to settle bills.
Taxpayers footed the bill through allocations from the general fund (the state’s primary operating fund that finances daily and long-term operations), even though state land accounted for less than 2 percent of the nearly 2 million acres burned.
Oregon State Fire Marshal Mariana Ruiz-Temple told state senators during a presentation in March that her No. 1 concern is having enough resources to respond to wildfires, especially as the U.S. Forest Service workforce shrinks under the Trump administration.
“There is definitely concern about what [resources and fire] could be if we start to see increased drought, increased heat domes and increased dry lightning,” she said.
Last year, a single storm brought dry lightning that sparked more than 50 fires in and around the Umpqua National Forest, contributing to one of the worst wildfire seasons on record in terms of total acres burned across the state.
