The prevalent or characteristic meteorological conditions of any place or region, and their extremes. (National Wildfire Coordinating Group/Fire Research And Management Exchange System)

Background: Fire climate, which may be thought of as the synthesis of daily fire weather over a long period of time, is a dominant factor in fire-control planning. In a broad sense, climate is the major factor in determining the amount and kind of vegetation growing in an area, and this vegetation makes up the fuels available for wildland fires.

The areas of North America in which wildland fires are a problem have a wide variety of fire climates. Latitude alone accounts for major changes from south to north. The shape of the continent, its topography, its location with respect to adjacent oceans, and the hemispheric air circulation patterns also contribute to the diversity of climatic types by affecting general temperature and precipitation patterns.

Climatic differences create important variations in the nature of fire problems among localities and among regions--seasonally and between one year and another. Knowledge of the similarities, differences, and interrelationships between regional weather patterns becomes a useful daily fire-control management device.