After months of relatively dry weather, parts of Arkansas are now seeing an increased threat from wildfires. The National Weather Service says burn bans have been put in place as the wildfire danger has been going up, primarily affecting the southern half of the state.
"The wildfire danger is moderate right now, so we're sending out those updates for the burn bans as we see those come up and the rain that we are looking at to get here in the next couple days and next week doesn't look like it's going to be in any amount that will change those conditions," said Meteorologist Travis Shelton.
He said that thanks to a wet spring, the wildfire danger has been low up until this point.
"Late May we had all that rain that we were doing and all the floods that we got that really saturated the soil in Arkansas. That's helped us out a lot in terms of dryness and wildfire danger, but as you can see we've really dried out here these last couple months,” Shelton said.
The state has only a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms over the next couple of days, which Shelton said will not be enough to make a difference.
