Weather watchers not shocked by Manorville wildfire

The cause is unknown but the conditions were ripe: No rain since April 1, wind gusts of 40 mph and low humidity.

All that was needed was a spark -- and within days more than 1,100 acres in the pine barrens areas of Manorville and Ridge had been set aflame.

Few in the know were shocked.

"The fire came as no surprise to those who follow weather and the pine barrens," Long Island Pine Barrens Society Executive director Richard Amper said Tuesday. "We are unlikely to have seen the last of it."

"It is drier and the leaf litter is deeper . . . and the absence of rain can be seen on the leaves, the trees and the ground cover," Amper said of the pine barrens. "It is parched."

The fire began about 2:30 p.m. Monday and destroyed three homes and a business in Manorville. By Tuesday afternoon, it had become the seventh-largest wildfire recorded in the state.

And it's hard to tell what is yet to come for the region.

"We don't know how things are going to play out over the next few weeks," said David Stark, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Upton.

There's a chance of rain Sunday into next week but nothing widespread, he said.

More dry days, some wind and a spark could cause another fire.

"We're dealing with a very dry and warm spring -- probably a 1-in-10-year event," said Brian A. Colle, a professor at Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "The odds are just stacked against us."

But a few days of rain could bring relief. And once vegetation starts to green in a few weeks, that will help.

"It is hard to predict [conditions] because if it starts raining again, like it has in many years, then the fire season stops," said Bill Fonda, state Department of Environmental Protection spokesman.

The driest year since records began in 1949 at Brookhaven National Laboratory, which is near the fire zone, between Ridge and Manorville, was 1965. In the first three months of that year, 10.65 inches of rain fell.

For the same time period this year, the total is 5.38 inches, according to lab documents.

The fire zone encompasses an area full of pitch pine and scrub oak. Dry needles and leaves are perfect conductors and take only about an hour to dry out and become fuel for a fire, Fonda said. Amper said the circumstances that caused the fire "still exist and are as much a threat tomorrow as . . . two days ago."