Worrying about weather, floods and fires

Apparently we humans have an inbred need to worry about something all of the time. In the first week of January, I heard several people comment that they were worried that if it didn't snow soon, we would have a really bad fire season next summer.

Now that we have had a week of fairly heavy snowfall (about two feet on Trail Creek, one foot in town), two people have commented that if this keeps up for two weeks, we're likely to have spring floods.

Personally, I try not to worry about things that I can't change or affect in any way - like the weather. Besides, a heavy snowpack does not mean there will be spring floods. Look at last winter. Record snowfall in the mountains. In many places, over 200 percent of normal. Despite the snow, we did not have severe flooding.

Same thing with fires. Many an open winter has been followed by a summer with few fires. Spring flooding and a severe fire season are usually the result of spring weather, not what happened in the previous winter.

It seems to me that open winters, with little snow, are most often followed by a wet spring. As a boy, I remember June as a month of rain. Sure, if we get heavy spring rains on top of a heavy snowpack, we can have flooding. Especially if the spring melt is delayed, and heavy rains fall on a heavy snowpack.

That happened in 1964, resulting in catastrophic flooding that washed out highways, railroads and caused millions of dollars in damage, as well as loss of life.

Likewise with fires. A really wet spring can create a major amount of high grass and shrubs. If followed by hot, dry weather, which really dries out the light fuels, and mix with a little lightning or a careless human, and big fires are sure to follow. This is especially true in unmanaged forests where fuels are allowed to build up over decades.

A prime example of an unmanaged forest is Glacier National Park, where stand-replacement fires are bound to happen every 60 years or so. Slightly managed national forests, where thinning and logging are severely curtailed, are only slightly less likely to have big fires.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the North Fork has had four major fires since 1988. The Red Bench, Moose, Robert and Wedge Canyon fires burnt about half of the North Fork, so we have major firebreaks on an east-west line starting just north of Columbia Falls, with another north of Polebridge, and yet another just south of Trail Creek.

That plus Forest Service fuel management since 2005 should keep my cabin - and yours - pretty safe for the rest of my life. But what about our grandkids?