Wildfire Season 2026
July 29 – August 6, 2026 Updated 5h ago
Every published chapter of The Fold's coverage of Wildfire Season 2026, in one place — oldest to newest, updated as the story develops.
The national wildfire scoreboard says this year is 130% of normal. In the Northwest it is missing more acres than it counts
The federal situation report’s year-to-date table credits the Northwest with 776,014 acres burned. Its own active-incident table, on the same page, puts the fires currently assigned there at 1,835,823 — a gap of more than a million acres, and the report footnotes why.
America’s two largest wildfires have cost less between them than one Colorado fire a third their size
A single query against the federal incident feed puts Aspen Acres at $97m on 101,961 acres. Rowe Creek Complex and Big Grass, 699,000 acres between them, come to $82m. What a fire costs turns out to have very little to do with how much of it burns.