When do fire bans usually come into place? Are they normal or once every couple years?

Basically they go into effect whenever it's deemed necessary. Nobody really knows what the new normal is.

I don’t know the specifics are, but I know the FS always has a fire danger rating. Every time you drive by a FS station you will see some type of rating. Anything above moderate usually causes a fire ban.

Fire ratings

This is an unusually bad year. I don’t remember a fire ban this long before. I am sure it has happened. Heck I don’t remember the BWCAW being closed before but on the news they just said it has happened in the 1990’s.

The fires happening now to some extent were predicted form the fuel dump in the 1999 wind storm, but adding in the severe drought conditions it has been a perfect storm. .

To answer the original question, they are normal. In 40 trips maybe 10-15 I had fire bans. My last fire ban was 2009. I had a lot of trips 2000-2009 that were in a fire ban zone. There were fire bans in the years form 2010-2020 but I was just lucky to not have it during my trips.

T

Sometimes there's a fire restriction vs. an outright ban. This is not a normal year.