KALISPELL – Bill Mulholland with the Tally Ranger District says the temperature and humidity are perfect right now for prescribed burns.
People will be seeing more clouds of smoke on as a prescribed burn is expected near Ashley Lake. District Ranger Mulholland told MTN News that prescribed burns are done as preventative care for fire season.
The controlled burn gets rid of excess fuel and grass and Mulholland says experts carefully monitor wind and humidity to keep hazardous air at bay. If weather conditions aren’t perfect crews will cancel burns to prevent poor air quality.
“Atmospheric conditions have to be right to carry that smoke away. If it has any type of inversion to it, we will cancel the burn. We had to do that last week, we were supposed to burn last Friday, but the smoke reports came back in so we couldn’t do it,” explains Mulholland.
Mulholland says these prescribed burns will continue until late May and anyone with questions can contact the Tally Ranger District at (406) 758-5204. The district regularly posts updates regarding burns on their Facebook page as well.
