The National Weather Service is saying that winds out of the Southeast are forecast to be strong over the next couple days as firefighters continue to battle the blaze.
The wildfire started in Oklahoma last week, reports Fox News, spilling over the border into Kansas. It has now consumed over 400,000 acres in Kansas and about 620 square miles in total. The fire is burning in a sparsely populated area, although six houses and some livestock have been lost.
While the winds could help in spreading embers, there is a chance of increasing humidity after Tuesday which would help in containing the fire. The four inches of snow that fell on Easter Sunday is expected to also help firefighters.
The Kansas Adjutant General’s Office says no people have been seriously injured. The cost of battling what is being called the Anderson Creek fire has already reached over $1.0 million, not including costs for the Barber County crews, according to KWCH, reports CBS News.
Predictions for 2016 wildfire season in U.S.
According to a March 1 report issued by the National Interagency Fire Center, The month of March shows a significant wildfire potential from the southern Plains up to the Great Lakes due to dry conditions, and especially during periods of high winds.
The wildfire potential in April will extend across the northern Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes, the Hawaiian Islands and south central Alaska because of increasingly dry conditions. We certainly don’t need another wildfire season like the one we had in 2015, where over 10 million acres went up in flames. Over half of that total was due to mega-fires burning in Alaska.
