Conditions this spring are a lot less susceptible to wildfires than they were during last spring’s drought conditions, says chief meteorologist Mike Smith of Yukon Wildland Fire Management.

Smith and Environment Yukon hydrologist Benoit Turcotte held a briefing Thursday afternoon to explain wildfire and spring flood conditions across the Yukon.

The meteorologist said with the amount of snow across the Yukon over the winter and a forecast of normal temperatures in the coming weeks, the fire danger will remain close to zero for a lot longer than last year.

With a hefty snowpack across most of the territory, conditions will be more moist, preventing any wildfires from burning deep into the ground initially like they did in 2019, he said.

Smith said the drought conditions are low to moderate and will likely remain so through to the end of June.

If a wildfire does develop under these conditions, it will be easier to extinguish, he said.

He said the snowmelt in the forest is expected to be prolonged because of the weather conditions.

The short-term forecast for rain, said Smith, is not calling for a lot of it but some regularly through to the end of the month.

Temperatures in May and June are expected to be right around normal or cooler, and not like the above-normal temperatures seen last week, he said.

Getting into late June and early July, Smith explained, the temperatures are expected to climb to perhaps above-average, leading to a higher fire danger rating.

The drought conditions to start the fire season is quite low, he said.

“The fire danger will start as mostly low, but moderate in the Haines Junction area,” Smith said Thursday.

“While grass fire danger will increase rapidly as the snow finishes melting, the overall fire danger is expected to remain low to moderate into mid-May based on the weather forecast. This is the limit of how far out we can make such predictions.

“For the longer term, we aren’t able to make any prediction regarding fire danger. Seasonal models are predicting warmer than normal temperatures for late spring and early summer, but for fire danger predictions we really need information on a week-by-week basis and weather models just aren’t advanced enough to accomplish that (yet).”