First Rain Land Stewardship Services will be conducting a series of prescribed burns in the Nevada County area beginning on September 2nd, 2026 and continuing, as conditions allow, through November. One of the questions you may be asking is, “Why burn now?”  Prescribed burning is dictated by a set of parameters that include the temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and fuel moistures. As these parameters come into “prescription” that means it can be a good time to use fire for beneficial purposes due to its controllability and the expected fire effects on the fuels and vegetation.

As the need for prescribed burning comes more and more into focus every year, fire practitioners will need to look to “non-traditional” burn windows to implement burns and achieve fuels reduction and ecological, and culturally focused objectives. Late summer burning offers a predictable burn window for our region, where immense reductions in forest litter can be achieved due to the dry conditions.

As we look at the forecast for the first week of September, we see temperatures in the high 70’s with the relative humidity in the 30s for much of the day.  While these figures will vary based on elevation, aspect, canopy cover and the specific micro-climate of the burn location, the general shift is towards cooling.  When we plan our prescribed burns, we take into consideration the site-specific conditions that will influence the behavior of the fire and decide which unit to burn based on this assessment. At the forefront of our process is the question, “Are we in prescription?”

We work with Calfire and the local air district to obtain the required permits to burn at a given time and scale, and we make a strong effort to provide notifications to our community about our burns through WatchDuty, YubaNet, social media as well as through the use of road signs and door to door communications.

We hope that this bit of information can help inform your reactions to planned prescribed burning in the near future, and help you understand more of the “why” and “when”. 

Thank you,

Tim Van Wagner

Owner, First Rain Land Stewardship Services