Nationally the 2017 fire season was near normal for number of wildfires and well above normal for a acres burned.
71,499 fires were reported with 10, 026,086 acres burned.
The Northern Rockies, Rocky Mountain, Great Basin, Northern California,
Southern California and Southern Areas all experienced above average acres burned within their geographic areas.
The Southwest was the only geographic area that experienced near annual average acres burned
while Alaska and eastern area saw below average acres burned.
The Great Basin area led the nation with over 2.1 million acres burned.
The Southern Areas' fire season kicked off early this year.
Several large wildfires started in March and burned throughout, Florida, Georgia and Texas.
The largest of these wildfires was the West Mims Fire which burned over 152,500 acres in Georgia.
The Rocky Mountain Area saw an average number of fire ignitions,
but burned twice their 10-year average acres.
Most of their acres burned occurred in a 24 hour period in the spring, during a strong wind event across Kansas.
The Northwest area had a similar year to
2016 with an average number of ignitions but burned over
140 percent of their 10 year average of acres. The Chetco Barr Fire in Oregon burned
approximately 191,000 acres and required assistance from the National Guard.
Northern California saw an average number of fire ignitions,
but acres burned were nearly double their 10-year average.
A strong offshore wind event pushed the Central LMU Complex to more than
110,000 acres in a 72 hour period.
This fire which resulted in the loss of more than 8,000 structures compromised the majority of Northern California's 2017 acreage total.
The Great Basin Geographic Area
had a normal number of fire ignitions and burned nearly double their 10-year average for acres burned.
This exceeded two million acres for the first time since 2012.
With the majority of large fire growth occurring across Nevada, these
Nevada fires included the Roosters Comb Fire and Four Seasons Complex,
which burned a total of over 378,000 acres.
The Northern Rockies Geographic Area experienced one of their busiest seasons in terms of both fires and
acres burned in the last 25 years.
Nearly 4,000 fires and 1.5 million acres were burned during the
2017 fire season. The largest fire in Montana was the Lodgepole Complex which burned
270,000 acres. The Lodgepole Complex pushed smoke throughout the state of Montana as well as Idaho
Colorado, North Dakota and Canada.
Hey there and welcome back to weather nation were bringing the outs in Montana the central portions of the state battling a very large
wildfire that has burned over 224,000 acres to the state still working on a little bit of containment....
The first the last several days the winds have been blowing from the north.
So we did have active fire behavior on the the north side of the fire as the the winds pushed it there, so it kept,
kept both local and and incoming resources fire fighters an engines busy yesterday.
Southern California had an above average number of both fires and acres.
5000 ignitions occurred and nearly
600,000 acres were burned.
Both were the highest reported numbers since 2008. Like Northern California
these fires were intensified by an extended period of offshore winds that created widespread acreage growth.
The Thomas Fire that originated in Ventura County
started under these conditions and burned more than half the total acres burned in Southern California this year.
California lost over 11,000 structures.