US wildfires have burned more than 8.5 million acres this year, 143% of the 10-year average

Wildfires have burned more than 8.5 million acres across the United States so far this year — 8,561,140 acres, or 143% of the 10-year average for the same date — according to the National Interagency Fire Center’s Sept. 26 situation report. Washington state carries an outsized share of that total: the Sinlahekin Fire in Okanogan County has burned 166,007 acres and sits at 93% containment, while the neighboring Little Giant Fire in Chelan County has burned 172,891 acres and is 81% contained. Gov. Bob Ferguson declared a statewide wildfire emergency and burn ban in August as both fires tore through record drought and high winds.

Sinlahekin and Little Giant anchor Washington’s near-record season

The two fires sit roughly 60 miles apart in north-central Washington, and together they account for nearly 339,000 of the acres burned nationally this year. Sinlahekin, in Okanogan County, and Little Giant, in Chelan County, both started in early August and are still not fully out nearly two months later.

NIFC’s Sept. 26 situation report lists Sinlahekin at 166,007 acres and 93% containment, and Little Giant at 172,891 acres and 81% containment. Both fires trace back to a single event: NIFC’s own Sept. 1 seasonal outlook says a strong wind event on Aug. 1 pushed both into “extreme growth” and separately burned over 800 structures in Spokane, a single day that reshaped Washington’s entire fire season.

Neither fire has grown meaningfully since early September, according to the same NIFC data, which credits crews working the two incidents with holding containment lines through several weeks of warm, dry weather that elsewhere in the region kept new fires starting.

8.5 million acres and a season that has slightly eased its own pace

The 10-year average itself, as tallied in the same NIFC report, works out to 5,999,611 acres burned by this date across 2016 through 2025 — meaning this year’s fires have already outpaced that baseline by more than 2.5 million acres with over three months left before the calendar turns.

The 143% figure marks a small pullback from where the season stood a month earlier. As of Aug. 31, the national total was 8,238,284 acres, or 166% of the 10-year average, according to NIFC’s seasonal outlook. The gap between this year and the historical norm has narrowed even as raw acreage kept climbing, largely because the 10-year average itself accumulates fastest during the same late-summer weeks that this year’s fires have already burned through.

NIFC’s national fire news page, updated Sept. 25, put the year-to-date count at 57,087 fires burning more than 8.5 million acres, or 145% of the 10-year average for fires and acres combined. That one-day-earlier figure lands within two points of the Sept. 26 number, suggesting the season’s pace has leveled off rather than reversed heading into fall.

The national percentage hides sharp state-by-state differences. Oregon has separately set what Axios described as a modern record for acres burned this year, and Washington’s own Spokane Complex Fire forced roughly 60,000 evacuations and destroyed about 640 structures. The 143% average is really a sum of several states’ worst fire years in recent memory, not one uniform trend spread evenly across the country.

Ninety-nine large fires were burning nationally as of early August, and Washington alone accounted for 17 of them, more than any other state at that point in the season besides Oregon.

Ferguson’s burn ban tries to hold the line into fall

Ferguson declared the statewide emergency on Aug. 1 after more than 1,000 fires had already burned roughly 425,000 acres in Washington that year, the most since 2021, with 200,000 acres actively burning across 12 large fires at the time. His proclamation named Sinlahekin, Little Giant, the Bradeen Hill Fire in Stevens County and the Kaiser Canyon Fire in Okanogan County specifically, and it imposed a statewide burn ban running through Sept. 30.

Ferguson said the state’s record-setting drought and high winds were creating dangerous conditions statewide and that he was declaring the emergency to help prevent further loss of life and property damage. Citing what he called “drought conditions, unusually high temperatures and high winds” driving the crisis, he later extended emergency protections to additional counties as the season wore on.

That burn ban expires just three days after this report, on Sept. 30, with Sinlahekin and Little Giant both still short of full containment. Whether Washington lets the ban lapse on schedule or extends it again will depend on rain that predictive services units, as of NIFC’s Sept. 1 outlook, expected to arrive only gradually across the Northwest through the fall — leaving two of the state’s largest fires of the year burning, unresolved, into October.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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