Southern Wildfire Status (FL & OK): March 30th

I have continue to follow the Oklahoma Forest Fire Service Fire News Blog, a good source because they post copies of their Daily Situations Posts on this blog. I noticed earlier this week that the wildfire activity in Oklahoma appeared to diminish. The decrease in wildfire activity in Oklahoma has apparently continued the rest of this week. I asked my friend at the NWS Norman Oklahoma about this in an e-mail a couple of days ago. He told me that for much of Oklahoma it seems that wildfire season may be over he had two caveats. One is that wildfire season may not be over in the High Plains of West Texas and perhaps for far western Oklahoma. The second caveat is that in some persistently dry years wildfires sometimes re-emerge in May. Fingers crossed that doesn't happen.

But as wildfire season may be diminishing in Oklahoma and environs, wildfire season has been underway in Florida for at least the last two or three weeks. In the last few days, I noted the news of two larger wildfires: one is an 8,000 plus acre wildfire that is burning in Gulf County in northwest Florida, see this report (with video) from News Channel 7 WGHJ for more information.

Then there is the 16,876  acre wildfire in Collier County, see this report from the NapleNews for more information.  Here is video from the Collier Sheriff of one of their helicopters with a bucket working the wildfire in Collier County.


Direct link to Youtube Video from the Collier Sheriff

As of Thursday afternoon, March 28th, there were 37 active wildfires burning statewide in Florida for a total of 32,874 acres burned, go to this Facebook Post that the Florida Forest Service shared on their Facebook page on March 29th to see a map of wildfire locations.