Lightning strikes courtesy of a storm that blew in Wednesday evening in the Madison Valley started three small fires in the Madison and Gravelly Ranges.
It’s official – wildfire season is upon us with more hot, dry weather in the forecast.
Looking at the extremes, in southeast Montana the Northern Rockies Coordination Center predicted the stuff wildfires are made of: temps on June 15 of up to 109 degrees accompanied by with single-digit relative humidity and 40 mph wind gusts.
Representatives from the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC), the Madison Ranger District and Madison County Emergency Management attended the Madison County Board of Commissioners’ meeting on May 11 to update the commissioners on the upcoming fire season.
The Elk Lake fire, on the east side of the north end of Elk Lake, began on Friday around noon. By 3:30 p.m., 300-400 acres had burned.
MADISON VALLEY—The 2018 fire season led to an eight-family evacuation in the Haypress Lakes subdivision while the Monument and Wigwam fires consumed tinder-dry brush in the Gravelly Range.
ENNIS—A fire camp big enough to be another Madison Valley town sprang up in Ennis last week as an incident management team from southern California arrived to begin work on the Monument and Wigwam fires.
ENNIS—The Monument Fire southwest of Cameron, first detected on August 6, continued to grow over the weekend and measured 4,215 acres as of Monday morning.
A second fire, the Wigwam Fire, was first detected on August 11 and has grown to almost 2,000 acres. Both fires are currently zero percent contained.
65 N. MT Hwy 287
Ennis, MT 59729
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