ORLANDO, Fla. – Despite Monday morning’s rainy weather, Central Florida isn’t in the clear just yet when it comes to wildfire threats.
News 6 meteorologist Candace Campos and Seminole County fire officials both agree there’s still a possibility of a fire risk.
“Although today’s [Monday’s] rain is of course very helpful, by tomorrow not only do we dry out, relative humidity is going to go down to that critical level and then we’re also going to add a lot more winds,” Campos said. “So tomorrow will actually be the worse fire danger day.”
Seminole County Fire Rescue officials said we need sustained rain for several days to reduce wildfire threats.
Campos said our area is running 3-4 inches below where we should be on rainfall averages for this time of year.
“I mean it’s not good that we’re so far in the deficit, in the red,” Campos said. “When it comes to our droughts, all of Central Florida is under that moderate drought.”
While a lot of Central Florida saw flood advisories Monday morning, Campos said that doesn’t necessarily solve the problem.
“The problem is, is when you have too much rain coming down, a lot of it just turns more into runoff it doesn’t really get absorbed into the ground and clearly not very helpful to our drought,” Campos said.
Not only do we need to see consistent rain, Campos said humidity also plays an important part.
“Our very summer like set up that normally starts happening and the end of May early June is when we’ll be able to check mark the dry season and officially be done with it,” Campos said.
See resources below from Seminole County Fire Rescue on how you can protect your property and take steps to lower wildfire risks.
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