After an unusually warm and dry winter, vast swaths of the Western United States are on fire—and conditions could only get worse.
Several large fires are burning in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Nevada and Utah. In Colorado, three wildland firefighters died while battling a blaze over the weekend.
“Major wildland firefighting activity is taking place in many areas, resulting in an increased commitment of incident management teams,” the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), which coordinates federal and state firefighting operations across the US, said Monday. The agency on Monday raised the country’s preparedness level to the second highest level, meaning all hands are on deck.
Fueled by shredded vegetation, the fires are spreading quickly as unusually strong winds extend their reach, especially across the southern Intermountain West region. The conditions are “extraordinarily rare at the end of June, and the impacts may be severe,” NIFC warned on Monday.
Winter weather set the stage for this hot and aggressive first season. As I reported in March, many Western states saw record or near-record lows in snowpack associated with consistently high winter temperatures, capped by a March heat wave that melted much of the reservoir. Analysis by colleague Peter Aldhous shows that the trend continues.
With even hotter, drier weather on the horizon, experts worry that the wildfires ripping through much of the Southwest could be a sign of things to come in the next few months.
A Hot Start to Summer
With a thick blanket of smoke hanging overhead, thousands of families in south central Colorado were told to evacuate Monday as the Aspen Acres wildfire grew to more than 20,000 acres in a matter of hours. On the other side of the Colorado Rockies, near the Utah border, the Snyder Fire has burned more than 30,000 acres and killed three firefighters, my colleague Nicholas Kusnetz reported.
Meanwhile, many other blazes are burning in many parts of the interior West, where “there’s really not a lot of moisture right now,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the California Institute for Water Resources at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a Monday video. “The air is dry. The soil is dry. The vegetation is also dry. So, it’s a very critical situation.
As of Tuesday morning, the Cottonwood Fire burning high and southwest in Utah’s Tushar Mountains is the largest wildfire in the US at nearly 94,000 acres—and may be the most destructive in state history, according to Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox. Still, “Colorado has become a landmark,” Swain said.
That is largely due to the strong winds and drought that has hit the area, which experts call “extreme weather.” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis declared a disaster emergency Saturday in response to the Snyder Fire, authorizing the deployment of the National Guard. On Monday, 83 new fires were reported across the country.
Some of the most dangerous conditions are expected on Tuesday, when winds in parts of Utah and Colorado could reach 35 miles per hour, the New York Times reported. The simultaneous fires have put a huge strain on the country’s fire services, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
As of Tuesday, more than 8,200 workers have been assigned to incidents across the country.
But the simultaneous fires come at a time of change for the US federal firefighting system. In the past year, the agencies have lost many trained firefighting personnel. At the same time, the Trump administration in recent months introduced a reorganization of fire forces under the Department of the Interior to consolidate them and create an entirely new US Wildland Fire Service. As our colleague Peter reported in May, experts say this could be a problem as the climate and environment are ripe for the flames.
And other fire threats loom, including from the Fourth of July.
Dangerous Festivals
It is perhaps not surprising to hear that fireworks are a major source of ignition, considering that fire is in their name. However, what may shock you is the extent of this danger.
When researchers analyzed wildfire data from 2000 to 2019, they found nearly twice as many wildfires were recorded on July 4 as on almost any other day in the US West. And this threat is likely to worsen as climate change continues to destabilize the region, experts say.
“When our founding fathers [adopted] the Declaration of Independence on July 4, they didn’t foresee that people would detonate fireworks in the drought-stricken western USA on that day in the future but that’s where we are,” said Dmitri Kalashnikov, a climate scientist at the University of California, Merced, told me.
To reduce this risk, Utah’s governor has taken an unprecedented step to limit fireworks across the state this holiday, although fire officials will work with cities to designate safe areas limited to pyrotechnics.
The federal government already prohibits the possession or use of fireworks on public lands managed by the US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. However, the Trump administration lifted the ban on NPS fireworks at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, where Trump is expected to visit this week, raising fears of wildfires in the surrounding state forest, Politico reported. Several national parks in Utah are already battling wildfires in the region heading into the holiday weekend, SFGate reports.
As we head into summer, extreme heat may increase the risk of fire, according to Kalashnikov. Earlier this month, he and his colleagues published a study that found nearly half of the area burned by wildfires in the West from 2001 to 2024 occurred during or shortly after a heat wave. In addition, the area burned each day during fires was more than 50 percent larger during heat waves than during previous cooler days.
“That persistence of many straight days of hot weather is just compounding things,” Kalashnikov said. “Things are always hot, they are always dry and critical, things are always warm all night, with low humidity.”
Generally, fires slow down during cooler evenings, but studies show that nights are getting hotter with climate change, meaning the flames can continue to grow and become harder to contain. With all this in mind, Kalashnikov said people should be more careful during this fire season and avoid activities that could accidentally start a fire, such as leaving behind a smoldering campfire.
After all, humans cause nearly 85 percent of the nation’s fires.
More Top Weather News
Around half of all Americans could be affected by the heat that has blanketed the Midwestern and eastern US this week.Briana Waxman and Chris Dolce report CNN. It could bring temperatures in some cities to their highest levels in more than a decade, possibly reaching 105 degrees Fahrenheit in New York. The combined heat and humidity can cause health problems such as heat stress, dehydration and even heatstroke, so medical experts urge people under the dome to seek air-conditioned places and drink plenty of water this week. Europe is also in the midst of a major heat wave, which has been linked to the deaths of around 1,000 people in France.
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is suffering from algae, the organisms that are turning the water in the historic landmark green less than two weeks after President Donald Trump’s multimillion-dollar renovation. This boring is just one example of a algae blooms in all US waters in recent years as climate change and pollution fuel bloomsSarah Kaplan reports for The Washington Post. The hot water has caused rampant algae growth, which is further nourished by runoff from fertilizers and sewage produced by farms and cities. While quick fixes like chemicals can help reduce blooms in the short term, these efforts will prove difficult in the long run because they don’t address the root of the problem, experts say.
A devastating earthquake struck Venezuela last weekkilling more than 1,700, the New York Times reported. Thousands more have been injured and more than 15,000 have been left homeless as a result of the disaster, although the total damage is still being assessed as rescue and repair efforts continue. Experts say that the country does not have the special assets that are needed to get immediate help after the earthquake that caused the damage.
About This Matter
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A reporter
Kiley Price is a reporter at Inside Climate News, with particular interests in wildlife, ocean life, food systems and climate change. He writes ICN’s “Today’s Weather” newsletter, which covers the most pressing environmental issues each week.
He received his master’s degree in science journalism from New York University, and his bachelor’s degree in biology from Wake Forest University. His work has appeared in National Geographic, Time, Scientific American and more. He is a Pulitzer Reporting Fellow, where he spent a month in Thailand bridging the gap between Buddhism and the country’s environmental movement.
