Brown County Commissioners enacted a burn ban at the regular meeting of the court on Monday, July 18th. Because Brown County is not currently considered to be in a drought according to the Keetch-Byram Drought Index, Comissioners unanimously declared an emergency situation that could be productive to wildfires and voted unanimously to issue the burn ban. This emergency declaration is required by law to enact a burn ban if a county is not in a drought situation.
Commissioner Joel Kelton of Precinct 2 stated that commissioners in the more southern precincts were concerned having had more grass fires recently and felt conditions were getting dangerous. “We (Kelton and Commissioner Gary Worley) went with the other two precincts, 3 and 4, who felt it was dangerous,” explained Kelton. “It is hot and dry. When humidity gets to 5-10%, that’s when a cigarette can start a grass fire, it won’t take much.”
Commissioners have kept the burn ban under consideration and on their meeting agenda since the most recent burn ban was lifted on March 7th. Brown County has been without a ban since March and the county has experienced several heavy rains and even some flooding earlier in the spring and start of this summer. Several Brown County volunteer fire departments have been called to numerous grass fires over the past week.The Keetch-Byram Drought Index, which is used to determine wildfire potential, indicates Brown County to be within the 400-600 KBDI range.
The Keetch-Byram Drought Index is based on a daily water balance, where a drought factor is balanced with precipitation and soil moisture (assumed to have a maximum storage capacity of 8-inches) and is expressed in hundredths of an inch of soil moisture depletion. The drought index ranges from 0 to 800, where a drought index of 0 represents no moisture depletion, and an index of 800 represents absolutely dry conditions. Presently, this index is derived from ground based estimates of temperature and precipitation derived from weather stations and interpolated manually by experts at the Texas Forest Service (TFS) for counties across the state.
At the current levels of 400-600 KBDI, TFS describes the wildfire potential stating, “Lower litter and duff layers contribute to fire intensity and will burn actively. Wildfire intensity begins to increase significantly. Larger fuels could burn or smoulder for several days. This is often seen in late summer and early fall.”
