Temperatures aren’t the only thing more typical of late July than of late June in Northeastern Oregon.

Wildfire conditions are also ahead of schedule.

“Things are definitely dry out there,” said Joel McCraw, fire management officer for the Whitman District on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest.

Dry enough that a pair of small blazes sparked by lightning early on June 15 smoldered for a few days before growing.

The first, reported on Thursday, June 17, burned about a third of an acre in Trout Creek Meadows near the North Fork of the John Day River north of Granite.

Two days later, on Saturday, June 19, a forest visitor reported a blaze near Beaver Meadows, about four miles south of Granite.

That fire burned about 1.1 acres.

Both fires were started by lightning during the June 15 storm, McCraw said.

Fire bosses called in helicopters to drop buckets of water on both blazes, he said. Both were controlled within two days.

Although lightning is not unusual in mid June, McCraw said the fires, both of which started in stands of lodgepole pine, burned more rapidly in what he calls “heavy” fuels — larger down logs — than is typical for the final week of spring.

“Everything we’re seeing is ahead of where we usually are,” McCraw said.

He said burning conditions are approximately four weeks ahead of normal for late June.

Graphs that plot the “energy release component” — which projects how much potential energy is available to be released in a fire — show that measure as being above average in all fuel types in Northeastern Oregon, and near record levels for this time of year in the central Blue Mountains, John Day Valley and juniper-sagebrush areas.

The fire danger is likely to worsen with hot temperatures forecast over the next week.