More than six out of every ten acres in the contiguous United States are now classified as being in drought, and the country is heading into a wildfire season that multiple forecasting groups expect could burn between 5.5 and 8 million acres before the year is over. The U.S. Drought Monitor’s April 29, 2026, snapshot puts the figure at 61.68 percent of the Lower 48 states, with 51.54 percent of the full United States and Puerto Rico affected. That is well above the long-term average for late April and places the country on a trajectory that fire managers, farmers, and water utilities are already scrambling to prepare for.
Across the interior West, soil moisture is critically low. Reservoir levels in parts of the Colorado River basin remain below historical averages after years of cumulative deficit. Streamflows tracked by the USGS WaterWatch system are running below normal in dozens of gauges from Montana to New Mexico. In the southern Plains, winter wheat crops are stressed, and ranchers in western Kansas and the Oklahoma Panhandle are hauling water to livestock on pastures that never greened up this spring. The drought is not confined to the traditional fire belt: parts of the upper Midwest and central Great Plains are also abnormally dry, raising the possibility that fire risk could extend into regions that rarely make wildfire headlines.
The drought by the numbers
The U.S. Drought Monitor is not a single agency’s guess. It is a joint product of the National Drought Mitigation Center, NOAA, and the USDA, with input from NASA satellite data, precipitation gauges, soil moisture models, and on-the-ground reports from more than 450 trained observers nationwide. Each week, a rotating team of authors synthesizes those inputs and classifies conditions on a five-tier scale: abnormally dry (D0), moderate drought (D1), severe drought (D2), extreme drought (D3), and exceptional drought (D4). The USDA’s explainer on the Drought Monitor details how the process works and why it carries weight with federal disaster declarations and crop insurance triggers.
For context, the last time drought coverage exceeded 60 percent of the Lower 48 heading into summer was during the severe 2012 drought, which the USDA later called the most widespread U.S. drought since the 1950s. That year, wildfires burned roughly 9.3 million acres nationwide, according to the National Interagency Fire Center’s year-end statistics. The 10-year average through 2025 sits near 7.1 million acres. The 5.5-to-8-million-acre range now circulating in seasonal discussions falls squarely within that historical window, though it has not been published as an official projection by NIFC or any single federal agency.
Where the wildfire forecast stands
NIFC’s Predictive Services division releases a National Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook at the start of each month. The outlook does not issue a single national acreage number. Instead, it rates regions as above normal, near normal, or below normal for significant fire potential over the coming weeks. The early 2026 outlooks have flagged above-normal potential across portions of the Southwest, the northern Rockies, and the southern Plains, areas where drought has been most persistent.
The 5.5-to-8-million-acre estimate appears to originate from secondary forecasting organizations that combine NIFC’s regional outlooks with historical burn data, fuel moisture readings, and climate model projections. The underlying logic is sound: when drought covers this much of the country heading into peak fire months, the fuel load is primed for large fires given the right ignition and wind conditions. But the specific acreage range should be understood as an informed estimate, not a government-stamped prediction. The modeling assumptions behind it, including ignition rates, wind patterns, and suppression capacity, have not been published in a primary federal document available for public review as of late May 2026.
What federal agencies have confirmed is the mechanism. Drought dries out vegetation, lowers water tables, and strips moisture from the dead grasses, brush, and timber that serve as wildfire fuel. When that much of the country is in deficit before summer heat arrives, the conditions that feed large, fast-moving fires are already locked in across broad regions. Firefighting agencies use both the drought data and the monthly fire potential outlook to pre-position crews, equipment, and aircraft before ignitions occur.
What remains unresolved
Several important questions do not yet have firm answers. The distribution of severe and exceptional drought categories shifts week to week, and whether the worst conditions will concentrate in the traditional fire corridors of the West or spread into the central Plains and upper Midwest depends on summer precipitation patterns that climate models have not resolved with high confidence for 2026.
Economic costs are also unquantified in official federal releases so far. Neither the USDA nor NOAA has published 2026-specific crop loss estimates or wildfire suppression budget projections tied to the current drought footprint. In past seasons of comparable scale, federal wildfire suppression spending alone has exceeded $2 billion, and agricultural losses have run into the tens of billions. But extrapolating those figures to a season that has not yet peaked introduces real uncertainty.
Cross-border fire and smoke risk adds another layer. Canada’s 2023 fire season, which burned a record 45 million acres and blanketed much of the eastern United States in hazardous smoke, demonstrated that wildfire is not a purely domestic concern. Whether Canadian fire activity in 2026 will compound U.S. conditions is a variable that no current federal outlook fully addresses.
What residents in drought zones should do now
For anyone living in or near drought-affected areas, the practical first step is to check the current Drought Monitor classification for their county at Drought.gov and then review the latest NIFC monthly outlook for their region. Local fire agencies and county emergency management offices translate those federal products into specific preparedness guidance, including defensible space requirements, burn bans, and evacuation planning resources.
With drought already blanketing the majority of the Lower 48 before the hottest months arrive, the window for preparation is shrinking. The federal data is unambiguous about the scale of the problem. The open question is whether communities, state agencies, and federal budgets are positioned to match it. The Drought Monitor updates every Thursday. The NIFC outlook updates on the first of each month. Both are free, both are online, and both are worth watching closely through the fall.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
