With regard to "decreased fire danger" due to the cool and rain, I certainly agree so far as "cool" goes, but not so much regarding the rain. Oddly enough the rain might incrementally increase the fire danger. The conventional wisdom during my years of wildland firefighting was that late-season rains do nothing to increase the fuel moisture (rarely are the rains sufficient to penetrate the soil to root level, and, also, many plants are not programmed to even take up moisture during the summer), but do wash the accumulated dust off the leaves of plants. Accumulated dust is a surprisingly good heat insulator, and slows down the spread of fire due to flame contact and radiant heat. If you doubt this, note that the retardant you see being dropped from aircraft on wildland fires works entirely on that principle. The water content of the retardant is solely a medium for mixing and transporting the retardant. It has no value in stopping the fire, and, indeed, under typical fire season conditions evaporates entirely within minutes of being dropped. The coating that is left on the vegetation is what stops the fire spread long enough for ground troops to get in and finish extinguishing the fire.

Mike Williams