07/01/15 2:15 pm The open fire burn ban remains in place for the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge

The open fire burn ban remains in place for the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. Although surrounding areas have seen improvement to the drought conditions due to recent rains, Refuge lands have not.

This image is a map overlay of fire danger adjectives for today (7/1/15) created by Predictive Services that shows the dryness of surface fuels like trees and plants. The yellow and red areas are very dry. Wildfires in other parts of Alaska have also reduced the number of fire crews available to help should another fire start on the Kenai Peninsula.

The other image is a table from the Skilak Guard Station Weather Station showing all fire danger indices for the past 7 days. This shows extreme for the Duff Moisture Code (DMC), and also the Drought Code (DC). DMC predicts how hard it would be to control a new fire. Here's the scale: green = low (easy to manage fires), blue = moderate, yellow = high, orange = very high, red = extreme (extremely hard to control fires). The drought code is an indicator of how hard it would be to extinguish the fire, meaning it would burn deep into the duff and put up smoke for a very long time.

Please help keep the Kenai safe...leave the firewood at home this holiday weekend.

For more information, contact the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge at 907-262-7021.