Dry conditions expected to fuel wildfire season in Collier

Remember a few months ago, when we were coming off the wettest wet season on record? 

Now conditions have flipped, and counties south of Lake Okeechobee, especially Collier, are starting to rise on drought and wildfire scales. 

"It’s definitely getting much drier," said Clark Ryals, with the Caloosahatchee district of Florida Forestry, which covers Lee and Collier counties. "With the lack of wind over the last week, we’ve only had human-caused fires, mostly dry brush. But if we get 15, 20, 30 miles per hour, we could see some devastating wildfires."

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As dry conditions set in last spring, Collier County experienced devastating brush fires that prompted unprecedented evacuations in neighborhoods along Collier Boulevard near Interstate 75 and in Golden Gate Estates.

The largest fire, blamed on a rock hitting a lawnmower blade, burned more than 7,000 acres, destroyed at least three homes and several other smaller structures and cars. 

This region basically has two weather seasons: the wet, tropical summers and the dry, breezy months between November and May. 

Cold fronts from the mainland United States often bring rain during the winter and spring, but those fronts have been warded off by a ridge of high pressure that's sitting over Bermuda and controlling weather in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. 

Record and near-record temperatures have been posted for Naples, Fort Myers and the surrounding area for much of this month. 

And that high pressure system isn't expected to lift soon. 

"We're going to stay basically like we have been for the past week," said Rodney Wynn, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Ruskin. "We have really strong persistent high pressure, and that's going to continue to be our dominate feature."

Significant rain isn't expected over the next week, so conditions should continue to dry.

"We're going to continue to stay rain-free," Wynn said. "We had a little bit of rain over south Fort Myers (last week), but we're going to see rain-free conditions for the most part for at least the next week."

Wynn said the weather service has not issued red flag warnings, which are posted when Forestry Service calculations reach a certain level and the relative humidity drops below 35 percent. 

Warm, dry conditions are expected to be common over the next three months. 

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is calling for an above average chance of above-average temperatures and an above-average chance for less-than-average rain for Southwest Florida between now and June 1. 

Lee County ranked between 450 and 499 on the Forestry Service's Keetch Byram Drought Index, which goes from zero for saturated conditions to 750 when the landscape is crispy. 

Collier ranked a notch up, between 500 and 549. 

Counties north of Lake Okeechobee ranged from zero to 449. 

"We’re just going to creep higher and higher on that index until the rainy season kicks in," Ryals said. "So that’s usually from late May to June, maybe Memorial Day. Once nature kicks in in May, that’s when we get super busy."