Scarce Rain May Prompt Burn Ban Request

Pasco fire officials are watching the weather to decide if they should ask the county commission to impose a ban on outdoor burning as the region bakes in 90-degree weather.

The relentless heat and lack of rainfall have firefighters worried.

“We’ve been watching it very closely,” said Pasco Fire Rescue Battalion Chief Michael Gordon.

The fire department could make the request as early as today’s county commission meeting. Commissioners have to approve any ban on outdoor burning.

On an index that measures how quickly wildfires can start or spread,  with zero considered saturated and a low fire threat and 800 a high threat, Pasco stands at 620. The state average is in the 500s.  

That’s high enough to concern firefighters, Gordon said, though there is no exact threshold to trigger requesting a ban.

The tardy start of regular afternoon rains has prompted the Florida Division of Forestry to rank Pasco in the very high category for wildfire danger.

The problem is that summer is here, but the summer rains aren’t.

Though there is no set date for afternoon thunderstorms to begin making their clockwork appearance, they normally get cranked up by the second week of June as humidity, heat and sea breezes combine to generate those afternoon boomers we've come to expect.

Usually we see more regular thunderstorms before the first day of summer, which is today. 

We’ve had the heat and there’s no shortage of humidity, but high pressure lingering over the Southeast is squashing the thunderstorms as they try to form on rising air currents.

Storms that do make it have been riding a dominant sea breeze from the Gulf of Mexico that pushes storms to the state’s east coast, said Nicole Carlisle, National Weather Service meteorologist in Ruskin.

Interior counties also have seen some of the rain that’s mostly missed central and western Pasco County. 

The result has been a string of sweltering days with temperatures punching into the middle 90s. With no relief from afternoon clouds and thunderstorms, the humidity and heat combined to make it feel close to 100 degrees.

That could change by the end of the week as the weather pattern shifts, Carlisle said.

Low pressure will drift over the Southeast, and counterclockwise winds around the low pressure will drag abundant humidity across the state from the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.

It should be enough to let the afternoon storms build with humidity stretching from the ground to five or more miles  above the earth where the storms form.

“That’s what we’re hoping for,” Carlisle said. “We’re hoping to get a more favorable wind pattern.”

Forecasters boost rain chances from the 10 percent to 20 percent we’ve been seeing to the 40 percent more typical for summertime by Thursday and Friday.

By then, the atmosphere should contain enough moisture to wring out a couple inches of rain.