Alaska has officially surpassed 2 million acres burned in wildfires already this season.
According to the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center Wildland Fire dashboard, 2,318,064 acres have burned in 426 total fires. There are currently 26 new fires and 209 are active across the state. There are an estimated 482 personnel battling 10 staffed fires.
“While this doesn’t guarantee a record fire season this year, it does illustrate how dry conditions are across the state,” the Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska Fire Service wrote in a blog post. “It’s also an indicator of how busy firefighters have been so far this season with several months still left to go.”
The Lime Complex of fires in Southwest Alaska includes eight staffed fires and 10 fires that are unstaffed, all of which were caused by lightning. The total size of the combined fires is 778,877 acres.