Wildfires rip through unusual parts of U.S., raising fears of a brutal season
By late March, Nebraska was already in the throes of a historic wildfire event that had burned more than a half-million acres. In South Dakota and Wyoming, strong, dry winds are flaring up big blazes. Dozens of residents in two Colorado counties had to evacuate over the weekend as record hot temperatures and extremely low humidity fueled the rapid spread of fires in the parched brush. And until last week, it was still technically winter.
Wildfires are ripping across the Great Plains, and other flare-ups are popping up in Arizona and Colorado remarkably early in the season. Firefighters and experts are watching these giant red splotches of burning forest and grasslands with alarm, warning that the timing, ingredients fueling their startling growth, and what they signal about the fire season ahead is a recipe for concern — perhaps signaling an expanding frontier for fire risk in broader patches of the western half of the United States.
“To sum it up,” Pete Curran, a staff meteorologist for Watch Duty, a nonprofit that tracks wildfires live and sends updates to users in real time, and former captain at the Orange County Fire Authority, put it bluntly: “We are scared s---less.”
“To have any fire that goes hundreds of thousands of acres in a day anywhere is very unusual at any time of the year, let alone in mid-March,” he added about the blazes in Nebraska. “It got everyone’s attention.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2026/03/24/wildfires-plains-nebraska-colorado-california-risks/
Good luck expecting help from this administration.
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