After two dry months, rain could mean relief for fires and drought

The floodgates of fall have opened over Eugene, ending a nearly two-month stretch of bone-dry weather. 

While August was defined by wildfires and severe drought across Oregon, the recent storm signals a possible shift in the season.

Fire season dampened

By the start of August, Oregon’s 2026 wildfire season had already shattered modern-day state records. Since then, the acreage burned has climbed up to 2.5 million acres, nearly 4% of the total area of the state. 

The devastation was largely driven by fires raging in central and eastern Oregon, like the Big Grass Fire, which recently became the largest wildfire in Oregon history as over 570,000 acres have been burned on the Oregon-Idaho state line, as reported by the Oregonian.

Additionally, the Rowe Creek Complex fires scorched more than 350,000 acres of central Oregon, making it the sixth biggest wildfire in state history. 

Even with the devastation, western Oregon, including Lane County, has been largely spared from large wildfires.

Record-low snowpack and a dry summer didn’t guarantee the Willamette Valley the active fire season experts might have predicted. Average temperatures, few lightning strikes and a strong marine boundary layer cooled and moistened fuels nightly during August in western Oregon.

“Even though we were really dry out here and we didn’t have very much snowpack, we kind of dodged a bullet,” said Larry O’Neill, state climatologist for Oregon. “West of the cascades is actually pretty good, a lot better than we were expecting.”

Lane county still got hit with a couple of mid-sized wildfires. Most notably, the Sand Prairie Fire, which ignited Aug. 26, burned 80 acres about 15 miles south of Oakridge.

Last week’s heavy rainfall could significantly reduce the wildfire danger in Western Oregon, said O’Neill.

The rain wetted fuels such as grasses, brush and surface soils, making it harder for any new ignitions to take off and spread quickly. The storm “is a great way to dampen the fire season and could be the start of the end of this devastating fire season,” he said.

However, O’Neill stressed that fire agencies will remain on high caution up until the end of September, as conditions could dry out again. And even with the recent rain soaking up some of the kindling, other ignition sources underneath the landscape are still very dry.

“We could still get a late season heat wave or an east wind event and that could pop up some fires,” he said. “You should always be practicing (fire safety) through October, everywhere, and regardless of what happens, unless we have like five inches of rain.” 

Recovering from drought

At the start of August, Oregon was on pace for the worst drought in state history.

“When you talk about the worst drought ever, you’re kind of thinking about the amount of economic impact that you get from, especially to agricultural production,” said O’Neill.

Near record or record-low streamflows and reservoirs drained faster than normal, leaving some irrigation seasons ending early in parts of the state.

Extreme drought conditions gripped much of central and eastern Oregon, and into parts of Lane County over the last month.

Although this summer’s drought played out about as badly as expected, O’Neill thinks it didn’t quite surpass the historic summer drought of 2015, which prompted state-level drought emergencies in 25 of Oregon’s 36 counties.

Although last winter had the lowest snowpack on record, precipitation was good enough that reservoirs entered this dry season with decent stored water, buffering some of the impacts.

“This year will be very impactful, but it’s probably not going to be as bad as 2015,” he said.

Despite the bone-dry conditions of the season so far, O’Neill thinks there is a strong chance Oregon will recover this winter.

As the state moves into late summer, this early storm could be the precursor to a wet winter caused by a very strong fall El Niño event, possibly historic in strength, said O’Neill.

El Niño events are typically warm and dry in Oregon, but very strong El Niño events tend to lead to above-average precipitation.

The question is whether enough of that moisture falls as mountain snow, not just warm rain. Snow acts as a natural reservoir that can slowly feed rivers late into the summer even as reservoirs empty. 

“Right now, all indications are that this could be a historic event, one of the strongest El Niños we’ve ever seen,” he said. “So this winter, because most of our reservoirs will be empty or near empty, we’re going to be relying very critically on a wet winter to help us recover from that, at least with rainfall, but maybe the snowpack won’t be as robust as it probably should be.” 

Climate change is already forcing Oregon to rethink how the state deals with water storage. 

“How we manage our reservoirs is a lot different than what we’ve done historically,” said O’Neill. “Snowpack is not going to be as reliable and that could have big consequences for our droughts going forward.”