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Outlooks: National Weather Service says monsoons and fires should be on track

The National Weather Service is predicting a normal or average fire and monsoon season for 2020. (Wendy Howell/WGCN)

The National Weather Service is predicting a normal or average fire and monsoon season for 2020. (Wendy Howell/WGCN)

WILLIAMS, Ariz. — The National Weather Service (NWS) is predicting a normal fire and monsoon season.

“Current guidance, current outlooks are for a near normal fire season. That means really ramping up in late May and into June and no indication on an early or late onset to our monsoon,” said NWS Meteor-ologist Brian Klimowski.

According to Klimowski, northern Arizona received a normal amount of moisture this winter, but did lack in snow fall.

“We only had 60 percent of the snow that we normally get during a typical Flagstaff winter. We have a couple of weeks left where we could accumulate but it’s not going to have that much of an impact, if at all,” he said.

Klimowski said that winter moisture has helped relieve some of the drought that was brought on by a very dry monsoon and fall in 2019.

In March, northern Arizona was above normal in precipitation.

“The rest of April and into May looks near normal for precipitation and temperatures are going to start warming up a little bit but still looking near normal,” he said. “We anticipate that we are going to roll into dry season pretty much as we would expect in an average year — we don’t see any excessive precipitation on the way, we really don’t see a drying and an excessively hot period.”

Based on climate center prediction outlooks, the NWS is predicting near normal precipitation for Coconino County but above normal temperatures for the next three months.

“Right now we don’t have any signals that would point us toward a late onset of the monsoon or an early onset. So we’re going to be watching very closely to how the precipitation falls especially later on in April and May,” Klimowski said.


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