A shift in seasons can be an exciting time for Austin area residents desperate for a long-awaited reprieve from the summer's relentless triple-digit temperatures, but firefighters say a return to fall brings with it a new twist to wildfire risk.
Many local firefighters at the start of summer predicted the season would mimic that of 2011, the year when the most destructive fire in state history, the Bastrop County Complex Fire, burned 34,000 acres, destroyed 1,660 homes and killed two people. It appeared those predictions might have been coming true in early August when Central Texas saw several simultaneous blazes while battling one of the worst droughts recorded in Texas this century.
The 2011 fire season was also the most significantin the state's recent history, with 30,896 total fires and more than 9.9 million acres burned,according toTexas A&M Forest Service data.
Wildfire experts like Randy Denzer, vice president of the Austin Firefighters Association, said what firefighters did not foresee, though, were several inches of rainfall pouring over Central Texas in late August, dampening the risk.
More:Austin area faces its highest risk for wildfires in a decade, fire experts warn
"We had a really big surprise in August with the lower temperatures and all of the rain," Denzer said last week. "It greened everything up, and it gave the firefighters a much needed break. It was a wonderful thing."
Despite the reprieve brought by the August rain, data from the U.S. Drought Monitor on Thursday showed that much of Central Texas remained in the two most severe stages of drought, extreme and exceptional.
Exceptional drought —the worst level on the drought monitor's scale and typified bycrop lossand extreme sensitivity to fire danger— encompassed about 53.7% of Hays County and about 81.7% of Comal County.
And even though Travis County decreased to the mid-tier stages, severe and moderate drought, this week, Denzer said conditions are likely to worsen again soon.
"What can happen in the future?" Denzer asked himself Thursday. "We still remain in drought. There is no rain coming for a while. Long-range models aren't showing anything for us for the next two or three weeks. Now, all of a sudden, the grass, which greened up and grew a little bit, is back where it's able to burn."
More:Don't let recent Texas rain make you complacent about wildfire risk, experts warn
Why wildfire risk is increasing again
As leaves begin to drop alongside temperatures in Central Texas, many Austin-area residents might be thinking that wildfire season is over.
But Brad Smith, Texas A&M Forest Service predictive services director, explained that, as a result of climate change, wildfire season has extended to all year long. He added that autumn, in particular, brings with it one wildfire ingredient that summer typically does not: sustained winds.
Firefighters for years have warned Austin-area residents that all itwill take for Central Texas to become the next area engulfed by catastrophic wildfiresare dry conditions, an errant flame and sustained winds.
Unlike California, which experiences consistent winds because of weather patterns influenced by the Pacific Ocean to the west and desert mountains to the east, Central Texas usually lacks similar sustained winds that could spread wildfires quickly across dry lands.
Still, the latest analysis by CoreLogic, an online property data service, ranked Texas third among all of the states in the country with the highest number of single-family homes at risk of wildfire damage. The top two states were California and Florida.
"We have a little bit of a different recipe for fires during the fall transition and going into the winter," Smith said. "Most of our fires start occurring around these cold fronts because when that dry air moves in after the front, we generally get some strong, north winds filtering in. That can trigger more fires, especially when we've set the table with dry vegetation."
For the third year in a row, Austin is experiencing autumn with La Niña, which is the cooling of the tropical waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean that can greatly influence weather in Central Texas.
Last year's La Niña autumn was Austin'ssixth-warmest fall season. This year, La Niña already has contributed to Austin'ssecond-hottest spring on recordand the city's second-hottest summer ever.
The National Weather Service's extended forecast is predicting above-average temperatures and below-average rainfall into October and November for Austin, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Orlando Bermudez.
To protect homes from the increased wildfire risk this fall, 99 of Texas' 254 counties — including Travis, Hays and Caldwell counties — have outdoor burn bans back in place.
What can you do to prevent wildfire damage?
One step Central Texans should take as early as this week to prevent wildfires from destroying their homes is cleaning out their storm gutters, according to Justice Jones, wildfire mitigation officer for the Austin Fire Department.
Jones, who helps educate propertyowners on how to protect their homes from wildfires, explained that it is normally traveling embers, not the actual wall of fire, that sets homes ablaze.
Residential neighborhoods, even if they are miles from the head of a wildfire, could go up in flames because of traveling embers that enter homes through vents, lodge under boards or catch gutter debris on fire.
More:5 things about Austin's weather worth worrying over in October
"In fall, we get a lot of leaf litter," Jones said. "Leaf litter in gutters is one of the main reasons homes ignite during wildfires. You need to make sure there is no path of vegetation that fire can follow to reach your home.
"You want to have a break around your entire home where you don't have any combustible material adjacent to the structure," he continued.
In addition to cleaning up homes, each person needs to have an evacuation plan, no matter where they are in Central Texas, Jones said.
Austin residents can visit wildfire-austin.hub.arcgis.com to learn how to make a plan.
"We encourage people to not let their guard down in the fall," Jones said. "It's almost a misnomer to call it a fire season. Really, we're in a fire year. The fall season is really just a transition from heat-driven fires to wind-driven fires."
