From southern Oregon to the Arizona-New Mexico border, the western United States is drier than it has been at this point in the year in over a decade. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, more than 90 percent of the West is now classified in some level of drought, with large swaths of Nevada, Utah, and eastern Oregon locked in “extreme” or “exceptional” categories. AccuWeather projects that between 5.5 million and 8 million acres could burn nationwide this year, a range that, at its upper end, would rival the worst fire seasons on record.
The numbers land at a moment when fire crews in several states are already responding to early-season blazes weeks ahead of the typical peak. Reservoirs across the Colorado River basin remain well below historical averages, topsoil moisture is critically low in ranching country from Montana to New Mexico, and forecasters see little chance of meaningful relief before late summer.
How dry the West has become
The U.S. Drought Monitor, published weekly by the National Drought Mitigation Center in partnership with USDA, NOAA, and NASA, uses a D0-to-D4 scale, where D0 is “abnormally dry” and D4 is “exceptional drought.” As of late May 2026, the monitor shows more than 90 percent of the western region in at least D0 status, with roughly a third of that area in D2 (severe) or worse.
The hardest-hit zones stretch across the Great Basin and the interior Southwest. Nevada and Utah have seen almost no measurable precipitation since early March. Eastern Oregon and parts of Idaho are running 60 to 70 percent below normal snowpack, according to USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service snow survey data. In California, the Sierra Nevada snowpack that supplies much of the state’s water is tracking below the April 1 median for the first time in three years.
NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System confirms the pattern, aggregating streamflow data and seasonal outlooks that show moisture deficits deepening across the region. The agency’s Climate Prediction Center seasonal drought outlook, available as downloadable shapefiles, indicates drought is expected to persist or intensify through at least August across most of the interior West.
What AccuWeather’s forecast means in context
AccuWeather’s projection of 5.5 million to 8 million acres burned in 2026 is a private-sector estimate. The company has not publicly released the full modeling inputs behind the range, and it is worth noting that the National Interagency Fire Center, the federal clearinghouse for wildfire statistics, does not issue comparable forward-looking acreage forecasts. NIFC’s role centers on recording what has already happened and coordinating suppression resources.
That said, the projection is not outlandish when measured against recent history. NIFC data shows the 10-year average (2016 through 2025) hovering around 7.1 million acres burned annually. The record-setting 2020 season saw roughly 10.1 million acres scorched, while 2023 came in well below average at about 2.7 million. AccuWeather’s range essentially spans from a slightly below-average year to a moderately above-average one, with the high end approaching the kind of totals seen in 2017 and 2020.
The wide spread in the estimate reflects genuine uncertainty. Monsoonal moisture, which typically arrives in the Southwest by early July, can dramatically reduce fire activity if it shows up on time and in sufficient volume. Conversely, a delayed or weak monsoon would leave fuels critically dry during the hottest weeks of the year. Wind events, particularly the dry offshore winds that drive California’s most destructive fires in autumn, are essentially impossible to predict months in advance.
Early signs on the ground
Fire managers are not waiting for the forecast to play out. The National Interagency Coordination Center raised the national preparedness level earlier than usual this spring, a step that triggers additional resource mobilization. InciWeb, the interagency incident tracking system, has already catalogued multiple fires in Arizona, New Mexico, and eastern Washington that forced evacuations or threatened structures before June.
Federal firefighting agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, have faced persistent recruitment and retention challenges. Pay reforms passed in recent years helped narrow the gap with state and local agencies, but seasonal hiring remains competitive, and whether staffing levels will be sufficient for a season at the upper end of AccuWeather’s range is an open question.
State and local agencies, which often provide the initial attack on new ignitions, face their own budget and personnel constraints. In states like Oregon and Washington, where wildfire seasons have grown longer by several weeks over the past two decades, those resources are stretched thinner each year.
Uneven risk across the region
Broad acreage projections can obscure the fact that wildfire risk is intensely local. Some western communities have invested heavily in defensible space programs, fuel breaks, and fire-resistant building codes. Others, particularly in the wildland-urban interface where development pushes into forested or brushy terrain, remain surrounded by dense, dry vegetation and older housing stock that is far more vulnerable to ember showers.
Even if the national total falls at the low end of AccuWeather’s range, a single large fire near a population center can cause billions of dollars in damage and blanket cities hundreds of miles downwind in hazardous smoke. The 2025 fire season in Southern California demonstrated that dynamic vividly: a relatively modest national acreage total masked catastrophic losses concentrated in a handful of communities.
Air quality is another concern that extends well beyond the fire perimeter. During heavy smoke events, fine particulate matter (PM2.5) can push air quality into “unhealthy” or “hazardous” categories across entire metro areas. The EPA’s AirNow monitoring network provides real-time readings, and health officials in western states have urged residents, particularly those with respiratory conditions, to plan ahead for potential smoke days this summer.
What residents and officials can do now
For people living in fire-prone areas, preparation is more actionable than prediction. State forestry agencies and local fire departments across the West publish defensible-space guidelines that recommend clearing brush and dead vegetation within at least 100 feet of structures, using fire-resistant roofing and siding materials, and maintaining an evacuation plan with multiple routes.
On a broader scale, the data that matters most is updated weekly. The U.S. Drought Monitor releases new maps every Thursday, allowing anyone to track whether conditions in their state are improving or deteriorating. NIFC’s statistics page records acres burned in near-real time, providing a running check on how the season compares to historical norms. And NOAA’s seasonal outlooks offer probabilistic guidance on whether drought is likely to persist, improve, or expand in the months ahead.
None of these tools can predict exactly where or when the next major fire will ignite. Fire seasons are shaped by a volatile mix of climate, weather, fuels, topography, and human activity. But with more than 90 percent of the West already in drought and federal forecasters signaling little relief before late summer, the window for preparation is narrowing. The data says the risk is real. What communities do with that information in the coming weeks will matter far more than any single acreage number.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
