Weather forecasters are predicting dry weather for much of the state for the next week, which could be ominous for what has already been an unusual spring fire season in Wisconsin.

John Lubbers, a Department of Natural Resources forestry staff supervisor, said the month of April has been hectic for firefighters trying to control brush and forest fires in the state. Lubbers helped fight the Crystal Lake fire, which stretched across an area including Waushaa and Marquette Counties in northeastern Wisconsin, burning 572 acres of forest.

“Ever since then we’ve had some good rainfall, but April 12 through about April 15 were very active,” Lubbers said.

Wisconsin’s typical forest-fire season is spring, although brushfires broke out during winter months in which there was little to no snowfall. In January, 30 acres of marshland burned south of Madison in the Nine Springs E-Way due to drought conditions.

Lubbers said the spring was more active than usual but not alarmingly so as of yet.

“The worries we had about a really active spring haven’t come true, and that’s because of periodic late snows and rain showers that we’ve had throughout the month of April,” Lubbers said. “It’s been sort of on-again, off-again as far as nice weather goes.”

Historically, spring is when fires in Wisconsin are most active because most foliage is dried out from winter and people are burning debris as part of their spring cleaning.

“Once spring moves into early summer and things start getting green and we start getting regular rain, the fire activity should taper off,” Lubbers said.

Monica Turner, a professor of zoology at the University of Wisconsin, said fires in Wisconsin are typically caused by humans more often than in western states. Jeff Cardill, one of Turner’s doctoral students, wrote his master’s thesis about the frequency of Midwestern forest fires starting from human error, as opposed to fires out West, which are often sparked by lightning strikes.

“Much of the fire occurrence is caused by debris burning, which usually ends in the summer,” Lubbers said. “Occasionally, a fire will be started by a campfire, and occasionally we see lightning fires.”

Turner said Wisconsin actually experiences fewer fires now than it did in the period before pioneers settled the area, when most of the south of the state was covered in savannah. Settlement of the area increased the number of deciduous trees in southern Wisconsin, which are less susceptible to fire.

In the summer of 2002, forest fires received close media attention as they swept across states in the western United States, prompting Colorado Gov. Bill Owens to suggest the entire state was on fire.

Turner said no one could be completely accurate in predicting forest-fire activity for the coming summer months.

“I’ve heard the snow-pack has been somewhat less than usual this year, but Colorado did get a huge snowstorm late in March, so that might have alleviated that problem,” Turner said.

Turner said different ecosystems respond to different management techniques and that while suppression techniques are helpful in some areas, they might actually increase the risk of forest fire in other ecologies.