Rain, now do not dampen drought

By Avice Meehan

Weather watchers like Russell Russ, property manager for Great Mountain Forest, greeted the late November rain storm with a sigh of relief. Yet like other experts, he warned that fire risk remains high across heavily forested Litchfield County and neighboring Berkshire County, where the Butternut Fire near Great Barrington has consumed more than 1,300 acres.

Russ, who writes Norfolk Now’s monthly weather summary, said September and October were the driest on record. Precipitation for November also remained low, despite storm totals of 1.62 inches of rain and more than 1.5 inches of snow on Nov. 21-22. 

The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) issued a burn ban for all state parks. According to news reports, DEEP was monitoring 50 fires across Connecticut, including a fire in Berlin that resulted in the death of a Wethersfield volunteer firefighter. The Berlin or Hawthorne Fire required a national response that included Norfolk’s David Beers, a state forester based in Harwinton.

Norfolk issued its own burn ban in early November. For Norfolk residents, that translates to no burning, no campfires, firepits or outdoor flame of any kind. That also means it’s a bad idea to stack wood against a house, that dry leaves should be blown away structures and that it could be too early to put away that garden house.

“It is important for people to follow the current rules and to be respectful of both their neighbors and the volunteers,” said Jonathan Barbagallo, public information officer for the Norfolk Volunteer Fire Department (NVFD) and team administrator for Connecticut’s incident management teams. “The fire risk remains moderate and will only increase until the next snow and rain event.”

Barbagallo said the department had responded to more than a dozen calls of burn-ban violations. Other incidents have involved power lines falling on trees, including the fatal accident on Route 44 in October and a close call at an isolated cabin near Spaulding Pond and the Aton Forest. The department responded to another six calls when smoke from the Butternut Fire was at its peak.

Variability in local weather patterns is now something that property owners and stewards of large parcels of land will need to consider. As Russ noted, Norfolk’s average rainfall was up 7.27 inches as recently as August. That means the rainy times are rainier and the droughts are drier.

“People need to understand that climate change is increasing the average temperature and precipitation in our region. But it is also increasing variability and the extremity of events. When we have a drought, it will often be worse than in the past, thus increasing fire risk during those events,” said Mike Zarfos, GMF’s executive director. He said New England is not as dry as the West and that some species, such as oak and pitch pine, can benefit from fire.

Russ and Barbagallo recently sat down to begin sharing information that would help departments in Norfolk or Falls Village respond to a fire within GMF. The forest, which covers 6,200 acres, has 13 miles of roads, constructed between the 1930s and 1950s, and another 15 miles of trails. Few would accommodate fire apparatus and now, water levels in most forest ponds are too low to be drawn down.

“We’ve ramped up the discussions about what would happen if we had a fire,” said Russ, noting that firefighters needed detailed maps and need to know where or how to position equipment. “We have roads, but you need to know what you can drive on those roads. [GMF] is remoted and have limited access to parts of the property.”

The challenges at nearby Aton Forest are different, in part half of it is a research forest and the other half, in the Spaulding Pond area, is intended to be left wild. It is not open for recreation but does have stewardship cabins with power—like the cabin that nearly caught fire near Spaulding Pond—and abuts other properties. And because it is not managed like GMF, the forest has more standing deadwood – ash, hemlock and, increasingly, beech.

“A healthy, resilient forest can withstand disturbance,” said Billy Gridley, executive director of Aton Forest. “Fire is part of the natural disturbance cycle, but forests are feeling less resilient, and we have to make more of them because they provide important ecosystem services.”

Until Dec. 7, Russ has eyes on the ground at GMF. The rifle season for deer opened on Nov. 20, and the roughly 25 hunters allowed to hunt in the forest are also required to report back about what they see. “We call them our monitors,” Russ said, “They are required to fill out a report card, the hours they hunted and what they saw.”