Forecasters put out warnings for the entire state of New Jersey for April 28 and 29 that the risk of fire outside is high.
There’s a combination of low humidity and high winds, perfect conditions, experts say, for fires to start.
Patrick O’Hara is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in New Jersey.
“There’s kind of a period in the springtime where things are really kind of dry and there’s lot of dead kind of stuff laying on the ground, like grasses and weeds and thicket like that, and all that stuff dries out,” he said, “and when you get a couple of days like this where the humidity is very low and the winds are really high those areas can become susceptible to fires.”
He said people have to be careful.
“We put the warning out to tell people just to kind of watch what they do when they go outside and just be very wary about burning things cause it wouldn’t take much for stuff to get out of hand,” he said.
O’Hara said this is not unusual for this time of year.
“There’s usually a springtime fire weather season and then kind of in the fall there’s a fall fire weather season too,” he said, “when things start to dry out again and a lot of stuff is beginning to go dormant.”
Humidity has been about 15% in our area in recent days, and with the winds Red flag warnings and fire watches were issued for all 21 counties in New Jersey.