An Extremely Low Wildfire Year So Far

 We are now through roughly one-third of the Northwest wildfire season and it is turning out to be a very benign one so far.

In fact, wildfires are at a low level for wildfire across the entire U.S.    Reality is very different than some of the fear-inducing headlines in a number of media outlets.  

Let me prove this to you.

Let's begin with the U.S. wildfire acreage to date (July 13), from the National Interagency Fire Center (see below).  This year has the LOWEST wildfire acreage in ten years.

I have also plotted the ten-year trend (dashed line).  It is going down slightly....there is no statistically significant trend at all.  The situation is not getting worse for early-season fires.

What about wildfires in Washington State?   Below are the year-to-date acreage burned numbers (through July 10th) made available by Washington State DNR (this is for the subset of WA State for which DNR has responsibility).

2023 has been a very benign year, with the third lowest wildfire acreage of the past ten years and only 8% of the ten-year average.

So far this year, Washington State has only had a few significant grass/range fires, most started by careless humans.  

We were vulnerable to grass fires this year because of the bountiful rain last year, which produced a lot of grass.  Grass fires occur every year because grass and rangeland dry out rapidly early every summer in the Pacific Northwest.  

The current wildfire situation today (shown below) indicates only two (grass) fires in Washington State:  the Baird Spring Fire (95%), which is 95% contained, and the Wagner Road fire southeast of Spokane.

Here is a look at the efforts to put out the Wagner Road fire:

Such grassfires have minimal connection with climate change.  And there have been remarkably little forest fire activity this year so far.

I continue to be optimistic about this wildfire season because the atmosphere seems to favor a persistent trough of low pressure just offshore, which works against wildfire growth over the Northwest.

To illustrate, here is the forecast of upper-level heights (like pressure) around 18,000 ft. for July 22nd at 11 PM.   Blue indicates troughing...lower pressure aloft.  A ridge of high pressure is centered over the Rockies.   Heatwaves and major fire situations are associated with a strong ridge of upper-level high pressure along the central British Columbia coast and enhanced high pressure offshore.  This is not the pattern being forecast for the next week or so.

The European Center ensemble of many forecasts shows a similar upper-level pattern on Sunday morning,over a week from now:

In summary,  wildfire acreage is at very low levels over the western U.S. and the Pacific Northwest.  This favorable situation should continue for a while.