{"id":676693,"date":"2026-05-31T21:39:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T21:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/676693\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T21:39:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T21:39:15","slug":"why-wildfire-experts-are-so-worried-about-this-years-fire-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/676693\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Wildfire Experts Are So Worried About This Year\u2019s Fire Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

As bad as things got in Los Angeles in January 2025, when 31 people died and more than 16,000 buildings were destroyed by wildfires roaring into residential neighborhoods<\/a>, many wildland firefighters look back on the rest of last year as a dodged bullet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Across the nation, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), which coordinates the federal wildfire response, the total area burned in 2025 was about two-thirds of the average<\/a> over the past 10 years.<\/p>\n

This year is shaping up to be a very different prospect, wildfire experts warn. Key environmental indicators show that the nation is a tinderbox, gripped by widespread drought and with a light snowpack in the mountains that will offer little relief as its remnants melt away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the same time, upheaval in the federal wildland firefighting effort<\/a> and the loss of many staff qualified to join wildfire incident teams since Donald Trump took power for the second time have left firefighters deeply concerned about their ability to mount an effective response.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is going to be the year,\u201d warned Timothy Ingalsbee, co-founder and executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. \u201cThe conditions are just ripe for some really bad outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, 2026 is already off to an inauspicious start.<\/p>\n

As of Friday, the NIFC reported that some 2.4 million acres<\/a> had burned in wildfires for which it had generated incident reports. That\u2019s almost double the 10-year average for the time of year.<\/p>\n

So far, much of the area burned this year has been in the southeast U.S. and Plains states, including Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. For the most part, these have been grass fires.<\/p>\n

Now we are moving toward peak wildfire season for much of the West, where the availability of moisture to help prevent forests from igniting across the summer months depends heavily on the slow melting of snow that has accumulated over the previous winter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s thin on the ground.<\/p>\n

This chart is derived from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s Snow Data Assimilation System<\/a>, which combines satellite data and ground-based observations to estimate the extent and condition of the U.S. snowpack.<\/p>\n

Following a mild winter in which precipitation frequently fell as rain, mountain ranges including the Rockies and California\u2019s Sierra Nevada were left with one of the lightest snowpacks in recent history. This means that its continued melting won\u2019t do much to dampen forests on lower slopes that are the focus of concern as the West moves into the peak of fire season.<\/p>\n

Soil moisture content across the nation has also been low\u2014although this is a much more volatile measure that can change rapidly with a burst of storms. This chart, derived from data from NASA\u2019s Soil Moisture Active Passive<\/a> satellite mission, shows that soil moisture has been low across the year so far.<\/p>\n

Indeed, much of the nation remains unusually and worryingly dry.<\/p>\n

This chart, showing a U.S. Drought Monitor measure summarizing the extent and severity of drought<\/a> across the nation, reveals that current conditions are drier for the time of year than they have been so far this century.<\/p>\n

As this map shows, the severity of drought varies widely across the nation, with the Southeast, the southern part of the Great Plains and the Mountain West among the most affected. As we move into the summer months, the Upper Colorado Basin and the Four Corners region\u2014where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet\u2014will likely experience the most severe wildfire risks.<\/p>\n

California, frequently wracked by drought, looks in better shape this year after some heavy rains, despite its minimal snowpack. \u201cCalifornia is a little bit more of a wildcard. I\u2019m not sure how it is going to go,\u201d said Daniel Swain, a weather and climate scientist with University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.<\/p>\n

While things look primed for a severe Western fire season, Swain and other experts say much will depend on regional weather patterns in the coming months that are very hard to predict.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI personally think it\u2019s hard to say, \u2018This is what the season is going to be,\u2019\u201d said Craig Clements, director of the Fire Weather Research Laboratory at San Jos\u00e9 State University.<\/p>\n

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One big unknown is what will happen with the North American Monsoon<\/a>, which typically brings afternoon and evening thunderstorms to Arizona and New Mexico from July to September. These storms are expected to increase in intensity with emerging El Ni\u00f1o conditions<\/a>. And while that should bring increased rainfall to the Southwest, reducing fire risk, there is also the possibility in its early stages of storms that feature lightning strikes but little rain, igniting parched vegetation\u2014similar to the dry lightning storms of August 2020 that triggered the most extensive wildfires in California history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a double-edged sword,\u201d said Swain. \u201cThose early storms could be a big problem. They could ignite many lightning fires.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Are Federal Firefighters Ready?<\/p>\n

The vagaries of weather systems are not the only unknown. The federal firefighting effort is in the midst of a major shake-up directed by the Trump administration, and its readiness for an unusually bad year is not at all clear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While coordinated by the NIFC, for years federal wildland firefighters have worked across multiple agencies. The Forest Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has the biggest firefighting force. Others have been employed by four agencies within the Department of the Interior.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But in June 2025, Trump issued an executive order<\/a> directing the secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior to \u201cconsolidate their wildland fire programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"U.S.U.S. Forest Service firefighters prepare a hose lay on a hillside during the Park Fire in Tehama County, California, on July 27, 2024. Credit: Stephen Lam\/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images<\/p>\n

In September, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced plans<\/a> to unite his department\u2019s programs into a new U.S. Wildland Fire Service. The Forest Service, which would lose a large part of its funding if its firefighting programs were merged into the new Interior agency, is promising to coordinate while retaining its independent workforce.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Forcing consolidation across the Interior Department and the Forest Service would in any case likely require approval from Congress, which has shown little enthusiasm for the Trump administration\u2019s plans and did not appropriate funds<\/a> for Interior\u2019s Wildland Fire Service for the 2026 fiscal year.<\/p>\n

Burgum\u2019s previous efforts to centralize power at Interior drew complaints about the organizational chaos<\/a> that followed: Some 5,000 staff were moved from the department\u2019s component agencies to his office in May 2025, and almost 1,800 quit, retired or were pushed out afterward. That\u2019s sparked concern about how smooth his overhaul of the department\u2019s firefighting efforts will be.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bottom line is it\u2019s disorganization,\u201d said Ingalsbee.<\/p>\n

Beyond the federal reorganization, the main concern is how many staff remain at both Interior and the Forest Service with \u201cred card\u201d certification<\/a> to work on wildfire incident teams, many of whom provide vital logistic support to those battling the blazes on the fireline itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Data on the number of red-carded staff is not publicly available, but as of the end of March the Department of the Interior had lost about 17 percent of its total staff during the second Trump administration, while the Forest Service had lost almost 11 percent, according to an Inside Climate News analysis of federal workforce data.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AA Sierra Hotshots captain directs crew members during a burn operation near Jerseydale, Calif., as the Ferguson Fire burns in the Sierra National Forest on July 22, 2018. Credit: Kari Greer\/U.S. Forest Service<\/p>\n

This loss of staff may help explain why the Forest Service treated roughly 35 percent fewer acres across the nation last year with prescribed fires, forest thinning and brush clearing to reduce hazardous fuels than in 2024, leaving communities \u201cmore exposed to the risk of catastrophic wildfire,\u201d according to an analysis from the Center for Western Priorities<\/a> in Denver.<\/p>\n

The Interior Department did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

As of May 11, the Forest Service announced that it had almost 10,500 wildland firefighters<\/a>. In a statement to Inside Climate News, the service said it was on track to meet its hiring goals for the peak of the 2026 wildfire season, including dedicated firefighters and red-carded staff: \u201cAcross the agency, we have about 10,000 non-fire employees who are also qualified to perform essential roles during wildfire response, even though their everyday job is not firefighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

But former wildland firefighters argue that staffing targets have long been too low, given the increasingly severe blazes being driven by climate change. And they worry that 2026 is poised to throw a severe challenge at teams that are overworked and low on morale.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not talking about firefighters who are making $150,000 a year like a city firefighter,\u201d said Bobbie Scopa, executive secretary of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, which campaigns for the rights of those tasked with battling wildfires. \u201cTheir base salaries are like $60,000 to $70,000. So you\u2019re asking an awful lot from a workforce that has not been taken care of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAbout This Story<\/p>\n

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Thank you,<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Peter<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tPeter Aldhous\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tData Journalist<\/p>\n

Peter Aldhous is a science and data reporter based in San Francisco. He got his break in journalism in 1989 as a reporter for Nature in London, fresh from a Ph.D. in animal behavior. Later he worked as European correspondent for Science, news editor for New Scientist and chief news & features editor with Nature, before moving to California in 2005 to become New Scientist\u2019s San Francisco bureau chief. From 2015 to 2022 he worked on the science desk at BuzzFeed News. Peter also teaches investigative and policy reporting, data visualization, and news features writing in the Science Communication Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a two-time winner in the Global Editors Network Data Journalism Awards. His reporting has also been honored by the Association of British Science Writers, the Association of Health Care Journalists, the Society of Environmental Journalists, and the Royal Statistical Society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As bad as things got in Los Angeles in January 2025, when 31 people died and more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":676694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[72432,72431,5473,192,5723,129568,56635,2125,33410,245033,192279,121011,244921,79,644,40861,295109,6322,6399,295110],"class_list":["post-676693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-department-of-interior","tag-department-of-the-interior","tag-doug-burgum","tag-environment","tag-firefighters","tag-firefighting","tag-forest-service","tag-interior","tag-interior-department","tag-interior-secretary","tag-la-fires","tag-los-angeles-fires","tag-national-interagency-fire-center","tag-science","tag-trump-administration","tag-u-s-forest-service","tag-u-s-wildland-fire-service","tag-wildfire","tag-wildfires","tag-wildland-firefighting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}