After this weekend’s rainfall, the question remains: is Oregon’s 2021 wildfire season over?
The short answer is no but the good news is that the way this wildfire season has gone, officials think we have already seen the worst of it this year. Jim Gersbach, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Forestry, said 2020’s wildfire season came in like a lamb and out like a lion, but this year is the exact opposite.
Gersbach says last year we didn’t have a bad summer up until the historic wind event on Labor Day Weekend. For that reason, we were socked in with some of the worse air quality in the world. Because of this year’s severe drought, that behavior was reversed.
“The summer up until this point has been a fairly significant fire season,” Gersbach said. “What’s happened though as we’ve gotten into September is we got a break from mother nature.”