Nearly 100 large, uncontained wildfires were burning across the United States on Monday, with the Pacific Northwest bearing the heaviest load: 26 fires in Oregon and 19 in Washington state, according to ABC News.
Fire conditions deteriorated over the weekend as wind gusts reached 35 miles per hour and relative humidity dropped as low as 5 percent — a combination that lets new starts spread rapidly. Among the newer blazes is California's Bug Fire, which ignited Saturday.
The heat is national in scope. In the Northeast, extreme humidity drove the heat index to 95 degrees in New York City and 101 in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, while the Jersey Shore registered a heat index of 109. In the West, forecast record highs included 100 degrees in Denver, 99 in Albuquerque and 107 in Madera, California.
A stretched fire season
The National Interagency Fire Center's August outlook had flagged elevated fire potential across much of the West, and the current fire count tracks that warning. Crews are triaging containment priorities around communities and transmission corridors while resources remain spread across multiple states.
Forecasters expect little immediate relief: the pattern driving the heat is holding through midweek, with flash-flood risk layered on top where monsoon moisture collides with burn scars, per AccuWeather reporting.