Grass Fires Heat Up Wyoming

Up until now most of the smoke that Wyoming has had to endure this summer was either from the north as it came down from Canada or the west, emanating from states like California.

We all knew that was not going to last forever.

They are a bit late in the season but those Wyoming fires are finally here.

If you keep an eye on the Smoke & Fire Map for the nation you can zoom in on Wyoming and see that our state finally has its share of active wildfires.

Upton Wyoming residents have had to flee from a local grassfire.

The Campbell County Fire Department is battling a fire just west of Gillette. Heavy winds pushed the fire through an area of homes and trailers.

There are a lot of pictures popping up on social media of fires around the Gursney area.

The Smoke & Fire Map shows what was burning as of 07/31/24.

The flame symbol you see highlights areas that are called "large incidents."

The orange/yellow dots are "satellite detections." That means they know something is burning only because we can see it from space. But it may not be a large fire, yet.

I was in Casper on Tuesday and I saw two of the smaller firefighting places heading up toward what looked like Muddy Mountain. If you look at the map of the mountain range below Casper you'll see that fire.

Here is the good news and the bad news.

On the bad news side, we have about another week or so of dry and warm weather. There might be an occasional thunderstorm, but it won't produce much rain. That means a greater chance of lighting fires.

The good news is that by the middle of next week, the forecast changes a bit, bringing up moisture from the Gulf Of Mexico. That will moisten things up a bit. Temperatures will drop some and most of the state will get some decent afternoon rain.

The latest forecast from regional weatherman Don Day is Below.

Most of the smoke Wyoming is suffering through is still coming from states west of us.

More good news is that fire seasons over the past few decades have been less severe, not greater.

While some years produce more wildfires than others, the overall trend, in North America and Globally is down.

Wildfires, especially in arid parts of the United States, have always been a natural part of the environment and likely always will.

Data displayed by the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, or NOAA, show no discernable trend for increased drought in the United States in over 125 years.

The U.S. National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) reports data on U.S. wildfires back as far as 1926.

According to NIFC data, the number of acres burned is far less now than it was throughout the early 20th century, 100 years ago.

Current acres burned run about 1/4th to 1/5th of the record values which occurred in the 1930s.

At that time, the peak wildfire burn was over 52 million acres.

In the decade since 2010, the peaks have been 10 million acres or less.