Burn bans follow months of rain

Despite historic flooding and heavy rains across the state this spring, 75 counties in Texas are under burn bans.

In a strange twist of nature, the rains contributed to the problem, said John Nielsen-Gammon, a Texas climatologist and professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University.

“The biggest fire danger in Texas is where we have a spell of wet weather followed by a spell of dry weather,” he said. “To get fire, you also need fuel, and all the rain that we had over the past year and a half allowed for grasses to grow quite a bit, so there’s a lot of foliage out there that can dry out.”

Harris County and surrounding areas are not under burn bans, but local parks and land managers say concerns will rise if arid conditions continue.

“We are getting dry,” said Sam Reese, Warren Ranch Manager at Katy Prairie Conservancy, which is working to add about 30,000 additional acres to the 20,000 acres of land preserved west of Houston.

“There’s still a green color to a lot of the forest out there, but it turns brown pretty quick if we don’t get enough moisture,” he said.

Several areas in the prairie lands have higher-than-usual grass — spots that could be fire risks.

“Within a week or less, probably a cigarette ember would be pretty problematic, and might be in some areas right now,” Reese said.

Most parks in Harris County should be able to withstand the dryness for now, partly because they are regularly watered and maintained, said Mike McMahan, special activi--

ties coordinator for Harris County Parks and Recreation Precinct 3.

Grassy areas in some of those parks — including George Bush Park and Bear Creek Park — were destroyed by floodwaters and have now become dry, he said.

“There’s a lot of areas that dried out so quickly and are in need of moisture to get the grass growing again,” he said. “Plant life goes in shock a little bit when it goes from one extreme to another.”

The Houston area received almost double the amount of rain in the first half of both 2015 and 2016 than it did in the same period in 2014.

Houston had 42.07 inches of rain the between January and June of 2016, and similar levels in 2015. Between 2010 and 2015, however, Houston never saw rain above 27.22 inches in the first six months of a year, according to Weather Underground. Close to the dry period

Record rainfall and floods have also inundated the Houston area the past two years. The National Weather Service recorded almost 17 inches of rain in one day in Brenham in May, snapping a previous one-day record of 10.38 inches in 1994.

And in the same month, the Brazos River reached a record level of more than 50 feet in Richmond, about 30 miles southwest of Houston.

This year, however, the spring deluge has been followed by rising temperatures and sparse rainfall amounts. Between July 1 and July 13, Houston registered low temperatures at or above 80 degrees for nine of the 14 days.

Problems are similar across the state. Burn bans are already in place for dozens of counties, particularly in West Texas but also including portions of Central Texas and the Panhandle. Bans are also in place northwest of Houston in a pocket of Grimes, Limestone, Leon, Robertson and Madison counties.

Roger Wade, a sheriff’s office spokesman in Travis County, where a burn ban is also in effect, said the Austin area has seen some of its lush vegetation turn brown. And the drier the grass, the more susceptible it is to fire.

“We’re getting into the dry time,” he said. “All that vegetation that grew dur- ing the springtime during that wet period is drying out … and is now fuel.” Leaders concerned

Most of Texas is not in a drought, however, nielsengammon said. Droughts are declared when there’s abnormally low rainfall, and the level of dryness Texas has seen this summer is not uncommon, he said.

Still, ongoing dry conditions are enough to incite worry among leaders as they look to establish burn bans in their counties.

“No matter how much we get rains,” he said, “it only takes so much dryness to cause burn bans.”