VIDEO: If you were going to have a fire in the High Country, now would be the time. The pine needles and dead trees that litter the forest floor are still moist from a wet winter and the late-spring weather has been mild with relatively high humidity.
Wildland fire crews took advantage of that to conduct burn operations near Happy Jack, Arizona over the past week. Crews set their own fires near the lightning-caused Wolf Fire, amounting to more than 10,000 acres of burned landscape that burned in a cooler, more natural way than the raging wildfires that have decimated High Country forests in the last 20 years. The weather has given fire crews and towns a head start on the fire season. They're using that to make forests more fire-proof and less prone to conflagration.