A little bit of rain hasn’t dampened the risk of wildfires for this summer, as one person in Cawston found on Monday.
The resident was mowing their lawn along Barcello Road, when their mower caught some of the grass ablaze, sparking a brush fire along the ditch.
“Thankfully there wasn’t any wind blowing,” said Jordy Bosscha, the fire chief for the Keremeos Volunteer Fire Department. “If it had been windy it could have got up into the vineyard and then the mountainside.”
A farmer coming down another road with a spray tank spotted the fire and held it until the fire department could arrive to extinguish it.
It’s another cautionary tale of the current dry conditions that are likely to only get worse as summer progresses.
“Even with a day full of rain, it’s still dry,” said Bosscha. “Even though the ground was still wet, the fuel, the grass was all dry.”
Across the Okanagan, the snowpack levels for June 1 were just 52 per cent of their normal levels.
READ MORE: British Columbia’s June snow measurements slightly above normal
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