Officials keep an eye on the sky

COEUR d'ALENE - Dry, hot weather has made fire conditions extremely dangerous - and with thunderstorms predicted for later this week, officials are keeping an eye out.

Local climatologist Cliff Harris said this month is the seventh hottest July on record, but the National Weather Service says that is about to change.

"It looks like Wednesday is going to be the hottest day this week at about 89 degrees" said Meteorologist Rocco Pelatti. "Then the temperatures just drop out."

He said a large cold front is moving in, bringing the chance of thunderstorms on Thursday with cooler temperatures. On Friday he said the temperature should drop to around 68 degrees.

"It looks like these storms will be wet," he said. "We will have wetting rains on Friday."

He said there is also a chance of rain on Saturday and Sunday, as well.

"Then we are back to sunny weather and a high of 84 on Monday," Pelatti said.

As for red flag warnings, Pelatti said that is usually reserved for storms carrying abundant lightning, and these storms are not quite at the red flag level.

"When there is a lot of ignition potential, we issue those to raise situational awareness," he said, adding that severe thunderstorms carry outflow boundaries, or winds that physically push fires.

"Firefighters watch the storms to make sure they get the thunderstorms behind them," he said.

Shane O'Shea, assistant fire warden for the Idaho Department of Lands, said fire crews will be watching the storms, but they are not too concerned so far.

"Typically what we see are storms coming out of the southwest," he said. "We have that lake effect that usually splits the storm, so they are not so bad."

O'Shea said there could be holdover lightning strikes that could pose a problem, but the wet weather should help with those.

"Either way, we are geared up for the storms," he said. "We are prepared."