Normally fires don't make me nervous here in New Mexico, we deal with them all the time to the point where we have a fire season. It's not uncommon this time of year for it to get over 100 degrees F out here and fires break out across the state but normally our rainy season would have started the past week but it is a little bit late this year and that makes me a bit nervous.
We got out of a really bad drought about 4-5 years ago so it is always on our minds out here for when our summer rains will come and start. We get 40% of our moisture from June 15th through September 30th and the amount of rain we get is correlated fairly well with the start of the season. Basically, the earlier it starts, the wetter it gets, the later it starts, the drier it will be.
What struck me about this fire is that they are not normally this close to the city and it was on top of the mountain which is normally cooler and wetter though we did have our Bosque in the middle of the city next to the river have a real bad fire during the last drought but back then, the Rio Grande ran dry through the city. I hope it is not a telling sign of what may happen in the future for us with our rain.
I hope the rains will start soon, so your area can avoid the drought.