December 17, 1998 transcript # 264-4
Subject(s): Fire Ecology
Title: To Burn Or Not To Burn

The spring of 1988 started out wet in Yellowstone National Park, with a snowstorm in May that dropped more than 20". But after that, the precipitation stopped. The ground, trees and vegetation dried up and by June when lightning struck the dried out trees, it led to the beginning of the Yellowstone fires that over 5 months would burn 800,000 acres. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow for The Weather Notebook. When the fires began in June of 1988, firefighters had to decide on letting the fires burn naturally or to put them out. First step though, was to find out what they could get from the weather forecast.

Phil Perkins: "We didn't get this is gonna be your driest, hottest, windiest summer ever otherwise, we'd have made some different decisions."

That's Phil Perkins, the Fire Management Officer at Yellowstone National Park.

Phil: "When we made the decision to allow the fires to continue as natural fires, the long range forecast was for a normal summer and typically around here and typically at our elevation we tend to get rain showers every 10 days to 2 weeks enough moisture that the fires don't get that large."

Large fires threaten people and buildings, but also taken into consideration was the forest ecosystems.

Phil: "They're a fire-dependent ecosystem here so all the trees eventually need fire to regenerate, so we weren't real excited about putting the fires out."

Yellowstone Park officials made the difficult decision to let the fires go and much to their chagrin, the summer of 88, became the driest, hottest and windiest summer ever. It wasn't until the snows of November arrived that the fires went out, on their own.
Our show is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory a non profit research and education organization in North Conway New Hampshire.

Excerpt from "Yellowstone and the Fires of Change" by George Wuerthner