2025 was ‘insane’ year for Utah wildfires. Will it continue in 2026?

SALT LAKE CITY — 2025 was a major reminder of Utah’s fire risks, after relatively quiet fire seasons the past few years.

State and federal firefighters responded to more than 1,150 fires this year, which is slightly fewer than the number of fires reported in 2024, but the number of acres burned nearly doubled. Wildfires burned over 160,000 acres across the state in 2025, the most since 2020 and more than the total acreage burned in the last three years combined.

It was also one of the more destructive seasons in recent history. Dozens of primary and secondary homes were lost, mainly from the Deer Creek, Forsyth and Monroe Canyon fires scattered across southeast, southwest and central Utah. Even smaller grass fires destroyed homes and other residences throughout the year, including a blaze that destroyed a pair of apartment buildings in Millcreek.

“We lost a lot more structures than in the last five years. … It was an insane year for structure loss,” said Kayli Guild, fire prevention and communications coordinator for the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands.

Why was this year so active?

 

A few factors contributed to this year’s extreme results, compared with previous years, she explains.

Utah largely avoided drought throughout the 2023 fire season because it took much longer for the state’s record snowpack to melt. The state’s 2023-24 snow season was relatively average, even helping all regions escape moderate drought status for the first time in five years at one point. Most of last year’s fire activity occurred after hotter and drier-than-normal conditions returned during the summer and fall.

The 2024-25 snowpack was even worse in some areas. Many parts of southern and central Utah flirted with record-low snowpacks before the state endured one of its hottest and driest summers on record this year. Nearly 80% of the state was listed in severe drought or worse by the end of the meteorological summer, compared with 0% the previous year, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

At the same time, the recent wet seasons enabled greater vegetation growth. The previous relatively quiet fire years meant it was still around, drying out as drought returned, and turning into prime fire material.

“We ended up with a lot of extra fuels to burn, and that’s why we saw that extreme fire behavior,” Guild told KSL.

Strong winds were another component of the mix. The Monroe Canyon Fire, for example, became the state’s largest fire in five years after winds fanned flames weeks after it had started.

There was an uptick in human-caused starts likely tied to the drier conditions. Fires along roadsides are always one of the state’s top human causes, but state agencies responded to many more in 2025 because grasses were drier than in past years. The same applies to other common causes, such as fires ignited by open debris burning or abandoned campfires.

Human-caused fires accounted for at least 60% of this year’s fires, according to state and federal fire agencies. It’s a slight uptick from 57% in 2024, up from 42% in 2023.

Most of these fires were small, but many still pulled resources away from the much-larger fires burning at the same time, Guild adds.

 

What will 2026 bring?

 

Utah’s extreme activity only faded with yet another change in precipitation fortunes. Utah experienced its warmest meteorological autumn on record by nearly a degree above any other year since 1895, but precipitation levels were above normal, boosted by a strong October, per National Centers for Environmental Information data.

Some areas received strong precipitation to close out the final few weeks of the calendar year, too, which helps lower fire risks. However, it’s hard to say how long these benefits will stave off large fires.

What doesn’t help is that there’s minimal snowpack so far, despite the precipitation. Precipitation levels at mountain sites across the state were 103% of the median average, but the snowpack collection was just 52% as of Friday, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service. It’s representative of the warmer storms affecting snowpack levels across the West since October.

There’s still time for this to change, as the state’s median snowpack peak is in early April, but it’s something that state fire officials are tracking because it could factor into 2026 wildfire trends.

“It’s going to be interesting to see if the trend continues,” Guild said, adding that models have been mixed on what to expect for the rest of winter. “What’s next year going to look like? It’s anyone’s guess, but we have seen a fuel load that have already grown.”