High vegetation and
dry weather likely to
make fire season busy

An official with the National Weather Service predicts a busy brush fire season due to high vegetation as a result of rain the islands received in the past two years.

"That's going to make for a very potentially bad fire weather season," said Kevin Kodama, senior hydrologist at the National Weather Service in Honolulu.

"We're already seeing that come about with fires in Nanakuli and even next to the H-1 this morning," he said.

Kodama added that it was much wetter from October 2004 through February. But in March, with the exception of the Windward areas for the Big Island and Maui, "the tap kind of turned off."

Since March, forecasters have observed large sections of the state under abnormal dryness.

"If we continue on this dry turn, we're going (to go) into the drought classification. We're going to really have to start keeping an eye on rainfall totals," Kodama said. The fire season looks like it's going to be pretty bad if it continues like this, he added.

Typically, the brush fire season starts in June.

"We're still in the early part of the dry season and as we head into June, July and August, things will likely get worse unless something like (last August's tropical depression) Darby comes up," he added.

"But barring that, it's just going to get hotter and probably we're not going to see a lot of relief in the form of rainfall in the places that we need it."