Indian Heaven Closure due to fire

[Water]

Correlation between how much rain/snow falls in the winter and the forest fires in the summer: zero.

Not true, sadly, from what I've read. Reportedly the wet winter caused lots of low plant growth, e.g. the amazing flowers we had, that then dried out and acted as tinder. I hardly know what to hope for now. I suppose we'll get a torrential rain after it is too late to do any good, resulting only in mudslides and more destruction.

but by the same token, winter of 2015 which I think was the heatwave winter (jeff park in march, etc).. didn't seem to correlate to lots of fires, which there was tons of fear about with low/no snowpack and low reservoirs. Maybe my remembering is rosy..

[retired jerry]

There has been no rain since June 17 except a little bit one day.

And temperatures have been hotter than normal, record number of days greater than 90 F

That probably explains a lot, not that I'm discounting the rainy winter

[justpeachy]

winter of 2015 which I think was the heatwave winter (jeff park in march, etc).. didn't seem to correlate to lots of fires

That was a bad fire year. From "Review of the 2015 wildfire season in the Northwest":

The 2015 fire season in the Pacific Northwest was the most severe in modern history from a variety of standpoints. Oregon and Washington experienced more than 3,800 wildfires (almost 2,300 in Oregon and more than 1,500 in Washington) that burned more than 1,600,000 acres (more than 630,000 acres in Oregon and more than 1,000,000 acres in Washington)—including 1,325 fires representing 507,000 acres on U.S. Forest Service lands (information as of September 30, 2015).

Also... 2015 now USA's costliest wildfire season on record

[BigBear]

Yes, 2015 included the big fire south of John Day and the several big fires around Lake Chelan & Twisp in northern Washington.

It is interesting from the feedback from my earlier comment about wet winter/summer fires that generated the reply that the fires are worse after a wet winter due to the extra plant growth...and we always hear that fires are worse with little water, too. Which begs the question: if fires are worse due to dry winters and worse due to wet winters, (1) what conditions make the fire seasons less "worse" and (2) what is the "normal" that every year is "worse" than??? Very confusing armchair-quarterback calls.

[drm]

What follows is that the main determinant is summer weather, not winter weather. Either wet summers (when did we last have one of those?) or a lack of thunderstorms to start them. Despite Eagle Creek, I think more PNW wildfires are still of natural origin than manmade, although I'm not sure that applies this summer.

I would add that our impression about a good or bad year is driven by what effects us. Rangeland wildfires in far eastern Oregon grow quickly and cover vast acreage, but don't affect our hiking much or give us as much smoke where we live. Large fires in the Okanagan region, which seem to be almost an annual thing now, also don't affect us as much. I also had the impression that 2015 was not a record-setting year because we had regular upper level low pressure systems during the summer that brought cold and wet weather to the Cascades. But that didn't stop the large fires to the east.

[drm]

Inciweb update says that substantial rain has moved in but that they expect the entire Indian Heaven wilderness to stay closed throughout the Fall.

They did open a few areas outside of the wilderness, like Forlorn Lakes.