You might feel lucky about Florida's drier hurricane season this year, but it comes with its own consequences.
In a typical year, the firefighters throughout the state put out about 2,000 fires. This year, there have been more than 3,100.
January is projected to be just as dry.
"I've been with the agency a long time, and this is the driest winter that I can remember in quite a while," said Rick Dolan, the Director of the Florida Forest Service.
He said there's no rain in the current 10-day forecast, which means wildfires are inevitable. Even the most recent rainfall didn't help much.
"We had a 40-acre wildfire in North Polk County yesterday, and they just had three-to-five inches of rain just over a week ago up there. So we burn year-round here in the state, and we're prepared," Dolan said.
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Many counties have had burn bans for weeks. Dolan said lightning starts some fires, but most are caused by backyard fires, and even arson.
Dolan said the best prevention methods are complying with burn bans, practicing safe burning when it's allowed, and regular "prescribed" fires by firefighters, where underbrush and debris are deliberately burned to help prevent wildfires from occurring. It's a practice that started with indigenous tribes.
"After the 1998 wildfire season, where we lost a lot of homes in this state, and there was a concentrated effort to really push prescribed fire forward… And so we burned about two-million acres this year in the state of Florida," Dolan said.
"To put that into perspective for you, there's only about 10-million acres burned nationally, so 20% of that this year was done in the state of Florida, and this was a down year," Dolan continued.
Wilton Simpson, the Agriculture Commissioner of Florida, touted the millions of dollars spent in recent years to upgrade equipment and invest in drone technology.
Earlier this year, Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, who serves as the State Fire Marshal, highlighted $1.4 million in funding to Florida fire departments, on top of money awarded through the the Firefighter Cancer Decontamination Equipment Grant Program and the Firefighter Assistance Grant Program to help fire departments buy equipment, supplies, and educational training to mitigate exposure to hazardous, cancer-causing chemicals.
"The goal is to be able to not have a California, Colorado, Canada-type event," Simpson said. "Our goal is to preserve life and to keep our citizens safe and preserve property."
Dolan said of the more than 3,000 fires they responded to this year, only two homes were lost.
"That's pretty remarkable, considering how many people we have here in the state of Florida, and it's really about reducing that fuel load and taking a proactive approach to fire prevention."
Peak fire season in Florida is April through June.
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