It’s could be a long, hot spring and summer – blazing hot, that is. Across the West, residents and firefighters are already gearing up for what in many areas could be a particularly intense season of wildfires after extremely dry winter weather. In Boulder, where it was 70 degrees yesterday (and where the thermometer in my car registered 76 on a recent afternoon), 18 degrees above the normal average for March 6, winds gusting to 50 miles per hour have officials worried about the high fire danger.

Three wildfires have already broken out in recent weeks, all extinguished before they got too out of control. But Boulder, which has had 18 inches less snowfall than normal this year, is under a “fire weather watch” issued by the National Weather Service. And it’s by no means the driest place in the West. In Albuquerque, there’s been virtually no moisture since October. In the central U.S., Texas and Oklahoma have already been blazing.

The Drought Monitor, which shows drought conditions across the country, described an “expansion and intensification of dryness and drought” across the Southwest and also said that “mountain snowpack remained exceptionally low” in southwestern Colorado. Experts are predicting intense wildfire seasons in Arizona and New Mexico, as well as in other areas of the West.

Image credit: U.S. Drought Monitor