If the brown areas above have a hot and dry summer, wildland firefighters will be spending a lot of time over the next couple of months in California, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.

And, those same areas were warmer than normal during the first half of 2015. Some were the warmest ever recorded for the period.

I stopped trying to predict the nature of fire seasons a long time ago. Pre-season weather is a significant factor, but more important is the weather during the fire season. So ask me again in September how busy firefighters in the west will be this summer.