ALLENTOWN, Pa. (WFMZ) — The amount of rain we got on Thursday broke a 61-year record in Allentown. Yet, our region is still under a drought warning.<\/p>\n
Thursday’s storms broke the previous record of 1.07 in. which was set back in 1965. Despite the saturation at 1.65 in., a drought remains in our area.<\/p>\n
“All the ground is starting to thaw out and the rain is definitely helping, but we’re still going to be underneath that drought warning,” said Jake Novitsky of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources.<\/p>\n
PA DCNR has issued a spring burn ban from March 1 through May 25 in state forests and on state-owned land to prevent wildfires.<\/p>\n
“I have a lot of brush fires that happen on days that in the early morning or that night it rains because people will get up in the morning and it’ll either be raining or starts raining at night and everything will be wet and then everybody’s like ok, today’s a good day to burn,” Novitsky stated.<\/p>\n
It’s fine fuels like grass, leaves and twigs that dry quickly and can easily ignite that typically start wildfires.<\/p>\n
“They don’t realize in the afternoon when they come home from work or they start burning in the afternoon, you didn’t get rain for four or five hours and that is plenty of time for all of those fine fuels to dry out. They’re ready to burn,” Novitsky told 69 News.<\/p>\n
If you’re anxious to get outside as temps heat up and go fishing, take a look at the water.<\/p>\n
“It’s Pennsylvania and you can fish year-round here, and, on our rivers, this can be a popular time of year to get out there for people looking for an early bass bite. If it looks more like chocolate milk than water, you’re going to want to stay off. It’s winter time. It’s still cold and slippery. If you go in that water, you’re going to be dealing with frigid conditions,” said Mike Parker with the PA Fish & Boat Commission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. (WFMZ) — The amount of rain we got on Thursday broke a 61-year record in Allentown.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,232,153,155,154,1133],"class_list":["post-131948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown-area","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}