A long, hot summer might be what we dream about in a cold July, but the prolonged dry weather could lead to a total fire ban for the Rotorua area.
Brief spurts of rain yesterday and the rain expected today and over the weekend will not be enough to quell the fire threat, Rotorua Lakes Council deputy principal fire officer Richard Horn said.
"Anything [rain] we get is probably only going to last a matter of hours or days as opposed to weeks. We need a significant amount of rain.
"The fire service has had to respond to a number of small calls last week, it's been [bad] enough that you have to send a fire appliance, and if there is something major elsewhere it means we are short.
"We've been advising people not to burn in urban areas but next week we will be going back and checking fire levels and deciding if we need to install a total fire ban for urban and rural areas," he said.