Fire chiefs from around the West Coast gathered Wednesday to reflect on the 2022 fire season and look ahead to the dangers presented in 2023.

Last year, Southern Oregon and Northern California were spared the worst. Officials say additional rainfall as a result of La Nina helped keep wildfires to a minimum in the Northwest.

"There are complex variables that all impact what the fire weather situation looks like and we try to distill it down to something understandable. It's very useful data not just for fire service professionals to prepare for the upcoming fire season but also for our communities," Western Fire Chiefs Association Interim Deputy Director Bob Horton said.

One factor fire officials say helped is the loosening of COVID restrictions. They say those restrictions led to many people trying to get out to the mountains and wilderness areas for recreation, and thus a lot more accidental fires.

The chiefs stressed, however, the risk of catastrophic wildfires has increased and there are not enough resources to properly combat all the fires that can pop up at one time.

They said a risk factor going forward in 2023 is the wet winter weather will lead to new growth in the spring. With that new fuel growth comes additional fire risk as hot and dry weather is expected to return this summer.

"Fire seasons back in the '70s and '80s that if you had a 20 thousand acre fire it was a career fire those were significant events. There weren't millions of acres like we're seeing now " said Orange County Fire Chief Brian Fennessy.

In 2022, few days combined hot and dry weather with extreme fire risk.

When the Mosquito Fire broke out in Northern California, there were enough resources to combat it that otherwise wouldn't be available.