Rain and scattered thunderstorms are possible Thursday afternoon in Colorado Springs, and they also could bring a threat of flash flooding in areas hit by recent wildfires, according to the National Weather Service in Pueblo.

The weather service issued a flash flood watch from noon to midnight Thursday for burn scar areas in southeast and east central Colorado; the watch includes the portion of Teller County where the High Chateau fire has burned about 1,400 acres, as well as Huerfano and Costilla counties in southern Colorado, where the Spring Creek fire has consumed more than 95,000 acres.

The local Waldo Canyon and Black Forest areas, where deadly fires burned in 2012 and 2013, are not part of the flash flood watch, said Jennifer Stark, the weather service’s meteorologist in charge.

“The Spring fire, in particular, we don’t know how those soils are going to react in that area,” Stark said. “So, we’re being fairly cautious by putting out the watch and bringing a heightened awareness to the potential for issues down there. We know we have a lot of people on the ground in that burn scar and we want them to make sure that they know an escape route or they’re not close to, like, a creek or a stream, that they can move to higher ground.”

Thursday’s thunderstorms could assist firefighters by bringing temperatures perhaps 10 degrees lower, along with cloud cover, higher humidity levels and rain itself, Stark said.

“We’ll take anything that we can get, but we also have some concerns about any rainfall on these burn scars,” she said.

In Colorado Springs and El Paso County, rainfall could total one-quarter inch to one-half inch Thursday afternoon, although Stark said she couldn’t say for sure which portions of the area might see precipitation.

In any case, don’t expect Thursday’s rain to end local drought conditions, she said.

“It doesn’t even put much of a dent in the drought that we’ve had,” Stark said. “It just is going to moisten the surface a little bit and give some relief to lawns and things like that. But we still need more precipitation really to get us out of that drought. It will be a welcome bit of rain for the folks that get it, and probably not hazardous if you’re not in one of those burn scars.”

The weekend probably will be drier, although more moisture could be on the way Tuesday of next week, she said.