In balmy and bone-dry autumn, red flag warning issued for nearly all of Minnesota

The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for nearly all of Minnesota and Iowa on Thursday, saying fires could spread quickly amid gusty winds and extremely dry air.

Burning brush piles or yard waste is banned while the warning is in place. It is expected to end at 7 p.m. and covers every part of Minnesota, except Lake and Cook counties along the North Shore.

It’s one of the more widespread fire warnings the weather service has issued in the Upper Midwest since it started giving red flag warnings more than a decade ago. That’s a testament to not only how unusually dry the current air mass hovering over the state is, but also how arid the entire region has been for the last 45 days, said Kenneth Blumenfeld, the senior climatologist for the Minnesota State Climatology Office.

There hasn’t been any measurable rainfall in the Twin Cities so far in October. And September was the driest ever recorded, with records going back to the late 1800s, Blumenfeld said.

“Then you add the immediate conditions of increasing temperatures decreasing the amount of moisture in the air and really gusty winds, all of those things are good at promoting the spread of fire if it starts,” he said.

Forecasts show temperatures in parts of the state climbing in the low 80s this weekend, with no signs of rain in the foreseeable future.

Minnesota Department of Natural Resource officials said they are discouraging people from lighting campfires, but they have not banned them.

If wildfire risk remains high for a more prolonged period, the agency in tandem with federal officials would consider campfire restrictions, said Mike Warnke, a DNR wildfire management supervisor.

”Currently, the public has been great responding,” he said. “If we aren’t having the issues, we don’t need to go to that further, heightened level.”

Staff at Minnesota state parks are talking to campers as they check in about the high fire danger and the need to use caution, said Sara Joy Berhow, a spokesperson in the DNR’s parks and trails division.

Under the state order, campfires are still allowed in fire rings at homes, campgrounds or resorts. They are prohibited for dispersed and backcountry camping, including backpack campsites in state parks in Cook, Lake, St. Louis and Koochiching counties.

”We try to communicate in many ways to reach people about safety matters and other alerts before they get to a park, but there will be some people who arrive at a park not having heard about the red-flag warning,” Berhow said.

The dry spell has dragged most of the state back into drought for the first time in months, with nearly a third of Minnesota in severe drought, according to a Thursday update from the U.S. Drought Monitor.

It was only a short while ago that heavy spring rains caused damaging floods that threatened dams, overfilled manure lagoons and swamped sewage treatment systems throughout southern Minnesota.

“It feels unlucky, like whiplash, to go from one hydro-climatic extreme to another,” Blumenfeld said. “But, in this case, we’ve actually been a little lucky.”

The drought and wildfire “could have been and would have been much worse,” starting earlier and affecting more places had it not been for the exceptionally wet spring, he said.

Staff writer Bob Timmons contributed to this story.