Black Hills FOX reporter Darren Leeds sat down with fire officials to see how this year's fire season is looking.  Smoke billowed into the sky as flames scorched acre after acre on M-Hill last March.  Temperatures reached into the 70s that day coupled with breezy winds and low humidity and all it took was a tiny spark to ignite the large fire.  Colby says, "The conditions were really bad for any of that work and it moved quickly. We saw several other fires in the week following that were exactly the same. Normal conditions would've been fine doing that kind of work, but in that condition with it hot and dry, it was just too dangerous."  Colby says the fire season in the Black Hills runs year round so it's not unusual to have fires pop up in January, February or March.  But she says the bigger fires usually don't occur until closer to fall.  Colby says, "As far as big fires go they're usually later in the summer. The August/September time when there's been a lot of growth, everything is dried out and it stays hot during the night."  And Colby says the current conditions this month aren't much different than they were last March.  Colby says, "We have dry grass, it's still high, it's dry, there's no snow covering it. If we had warm temps, that's about the only difference from today than it was a year ago. If we had some good warm temps we'd have the same risk for a fire."  Colby says we should be getting more moisture in the near future from some rain and snow.But she says that still won't be enough to end the ongoing drought.  And as far as this year's fire outlook Colby says only time will tell.

Darren Leads