After weeks of cooling skies and a weekend of steady rain, Santa Rosa fire officials have declared the city's wildfire season over -- closing the chapter on a quieter year for local fire activity.
For an area long defined by devastating autumn fires, the announcement marked a welcome pause.
The declaration suspends enforcement of the city's weed abatement ordinance and signals the department's transition to its winter response model, which requires fewer firefighters to vegetation fire reports, Division Chief and Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal said Wednesday. It also means pile burning permits will soon be issued to approved applicants, likely starting in November.
Property owners in wildland-urban interface areas, vacant lots and large parcels are no longer required to keep grasses and weeds under 4 inches, as city rules typically require during fire season. Other vegetation management inspections will continue year-round.
Officials made the call after a cooler-than-normal summer and a series of fall storms that dropped roughly an inch or more of rain across the city, according to the citywide weather dashboard. The moisture pushed local fuel levels back up to early-spring conditions, though they're expected to drop again after this weekend, said National Weather Service meteorologist Dalton Behringer.
Santa Rosa saw about 40 inches of rainfall between October 2024 and April, fueling dense vegetation that initially worried fire officials. Similar conditions preceded the 2017 Tubbs Fire and 2020 Glass Fire, Lowenthal said. But this year's milder summer helped ease those fears.
Behringer said average temperatures over the summer were roughly 2.5 degrees cooler than last year -- about 67.5 degrees compared to 70.
"That doesn't seem like a big swing when you're talking day-to-day," he said, "but seasonably that's a pretty big change -- certainly noticeable."
While winds occasionally picked up, none triggered red-flag warnings for extreme wildfire growth. The last such warning affecting the interior North Bay was issued the first week of November 2024 -- more than 340 days ago, Behringer said.
Santa Rosa still saw several wildfires this year, including a vegetation fire along Highway 101 that destroyed four homes in a Santa Rosa trailer park. Still, the city avoided any large, multi-acre blazes, which Lowenthal attributes to favorable weather and a more proactive community.
"We saw a real shift in the responsiveness and urge for our community to do their part following the 2017 fires, and it seems like each year since then compliance continues to get better," Lowenthal said. "People continue to do their part and be educated on what they need to be doing to be wildfire ready."
That improvement is reflected in weed-abatement violations, which dropped to 67 this year, down from 84 last year -- a steep decline from the hundreds recorded just a few years ago. Inspectors now cover about 9,000 parcels across the city.
Reflecting the same trend, Cal Fire on Monday lifted its burn-permit suspension for eligible North Bay residents, Division Chief Ryan Isham said.
"It is one of the first indications... that we could potentially be coming out of peak season," Isham said. "But I would caution that it is California, and there is always a possibility that we can have large wildfires."
Across Cal Fire's Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit, fire activity remains below average, Cal Fire spokesperson Jason Clay said. About 350 fires have burned roughly 8,330 acres since January, including more than 250 since June. The largest was the Pickett Fire, which started Aug. 21, burned 6,819 acres and destroyed five structures in eastern Napa County.
Cal Fire LNU remains at peak staffing levels and expects to maintain them until mid-December before transitioning to base-season operations, the period after the formal "peak fire season" ends, Isham said.
Lowenthal said Santa Rosa residents should stay alert through winter but understand that local fire risk is now much lower.
"Could a vegetation fire happen this afternoon? Absolutely," he said. "But the threat with the fire happening right now is much different today than it would have been two months ago, when we were much warmer, dry and windy."