As he makes the rounds on his Okanogan County ranch, Joel Kretz watches for moisture with fire on his mind.
It’s been a cold spring, said Kretz, who is also a GOP state representative, “and then every time it rained, we got a ton of wind afterward, dried it all up.”
Every Washington wildfire season brings a reckoning with the tea leaves to get a lead on what the summer and fall might bring: snowpack levels, weather predictions, drought conditions.
Right now, a widespread drought is raising fears about the months ahead.
“I’m really nervous,” Kretz said over the phone earlier this month. “I’ve lived here on Bodie Mountain for 31 years, and it’s probably dry as I’ve ever seen it at this point.”
Residents across the state these past several years have become intimate with one or another hellish manifestation of wildfire season: blankets of smoke muddying the air; swaths of forest and grasslands scorched; homes, businesses and towns burned to the ground; lives lost.