Through October 10 the US has burned 9,013,826 acres in 63,822 wildfires. That is already 28% more than the 10-year average for an entire year, and the third-largest total of the last decade, behind 2020 and 2017. Canada burned 11.1 million acres (4.49 million hectares) from 5,248 fires through August 31.
Canada lit a twelfth as many fires and burned more ground. The average Canadian fire this year covered about 2,100 acres. The average US fire covered about 140. Most US fires are caught small near roads and towns; much of Canada's burning happens in roadless boreal forest where fires are watched rather than fought.
Two weeks in July
Acres are credited to the month a fire was discovered, so a July fire that grew into August counts in July. October runs through the 10th. Source: NIFC WFIGS. Fire counts here include only fires reported to the federal feed, which misses many small state-handled fires; the official total is 63,822.
Fires discovered in July account for 3.98 million acres, 44% of the US year. Most of that came from one lightning outbreak. Fires that started in Oregon, Washington and Idaho between July 14 and July 28 burned 3.2 million acres, about a third of the national total, in fifteen days. Oregon finished with 2.49 million acres, close to 4% of the state.
There was an earlier peak most people have already forgotten. Grass fires on the Plains in February and March burned 1.4 million acres across Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas, led by the Morrill fire in the Nebraska Sandhills at 642,029 acres, the largest US fire of the year.
Lightning did most of the work. Fires with a natural cause burned 4.79 million acres from 6,553 starts. Human-caused fires were more than twice as numerous and burned less than half as much, 2.18 million acres.
A cold, wet storm at the start of September shut it down across northern California, the Northwest and the northern Rockies. The national preparedness level fell from 5 to 2 between September 4 and 22. Fires discovered in September burned 188,000 acres; October so far, 11,000.
The largest fires of 2026
| Fire | Where | Acres |
|---|---|---|
| Thunder Bay 36CAJul 12 | Northwestern Ontario | 744,379 |
| MorrillMar 13 | Garden County, NE | 642,029 |
| Big GrassJul 23 | Malheur County, OR | 578,637 |
| Pear LakeCAJul 17 | Cariboo, BC | 409,969 |
| CrosswhiteJul 16 | Wheeler County, OR | 342,923 |
| Coleman CreekJul 25 | Harney County, OR | 308,863 |
| Ranger RoadFeb 17 | Beaver County, OK | 283,283 |
| Little GiantJul 16 | Chelan County, WA | 172,906 |
| Ainslie CreekCAJul 4 | Fraser Canyon, BC | 172,245 |
| SinlahekinJul 26 | Okanogan County, WA | 166,007 |
| FS016CAn/a | Northwest Territories | 164,839 |
| Quebec fire 413CAJun 27 | Northern Quebec | 159,721 |
Thunder Bay 36 in northwestern Ontario was the largest fire on the continent, about 744,000 acres (301,240 hectares). The costliest US fire was Little Giant, northwest of Leavenworth, Washington, at $196.7 million so far, followed by Crosswhite in central Oregon ($138.3 million) and Big Grass in the Owyhee country ($82.2 million).
Where it burned, scaled by size
Raw acreage flatters big states, so the map above defaults to the share of each state or province that burned. Oregon leads at 4.0%, then Washington (2.0%), Nebraska (1.9%), the Northwest Territories (1.3%), Oklahoma (1.3%) and Utah (1.0%). California had the most fires of any state, 8,495 in the federal feed, but burned 0.4% of its area. The Northeast barely burned at all: New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania together recorded about 2,000 acres.
That last number matters for the next section. The part of the continent that burned least had some of the worst air.
Where the smoke went
A note on what we can and cannot say. TrailSmoke does not keep a smoke archive: the forecast layers are rebuilt every 15 minutes and old hours are dropped. So there is no stored TrailSmoke record of every plume this year. What follows comes from public monitor data, published analyses, and what our own readers looked up.
Acres and smoke are different things. A grass fire consumes a ton or two of fuel per acre and is done with any one spot in minutes. A boreal forest fire burns tree crowns and the deep organic soil underneath, consuming tens of tons per acre, and can smolder for weeks. Morrill burned 642,000 acres of Sandhills grass in a few March days and its smoke stayed regional. The northwestern Ontario fires burning in mid-July covered a comparable area of forest, and their smoke put a hundred million people under air-quality alerts.
July 12–13
Thunder Bay 36 and Dryden 34 start in northwestern Ontario, part of a cluster of fast-growing fires there.July 15–16
Toronto has the worst air of any major city in the world. Hourly AQI tops 1,000 at monitors in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, including 1,135 near Saginaw. Milwaukee reaches 644, its worst on record; Cleveland 576; Detroit 460.July 17–18
Air-quality alerts cover more than 100 million people in 18 states and DC. New York City peaks near AQI 173 before the plume moves offshore. See our account of that week.July 16 to early September
The lightning fires in Oregon, Washington and Idaho put smoke into the Columbia Basin and the Cascade valleys. It does not travel far; it sits. Oregon issues rolling smoke advisories into the first days of September.Early September
Rain across the Northwest ends the western smoke season.
So 2026 delivered two different smoke years. The East got a short, extreme episode from fires a thousand miles away. The Northwest got its own smoke, at lower peaks, for six weeks. By the per-person measure that captures both, Climate Central ranks 2026 the third-smokiest US year since 2006 through mid-September, partly on the strength of Canadian smoke.
Our tracking began July 21, so the first week is partial and the mid-July Ontario event is not in it.
Our readers followed the Northwest. City forecast searches on TrailSmoke peaked the week of August 3, at nearly four times the late-July level, as the Oregon and Washington fires grew. Washington drew more searches than any other state, then Oregon, Wyoming, Montana and California. Since mid-September searches have run at 2 to 4% of that peak.
What is left of the season
Fire season does not end everywhere at once. It moves south and east. The Northwest and northern Rockies have been wet since the first week of September. What remains through December is grass and leaf-litter fire in the southern Plains and the mid-South, where September was hot and dry and drought is spreading. Pick a month:
Above-normal fire potential, October
- North Texas and western Oklahoma
- East Texas into the Lower Mississippi Valley
- Northeast Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, western Upper Michigan
- Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands
Heat-driven fire is done for the year. The risk now is dry cold fronts and wind on cured grass, plus a warm first half of October in Southern California with some offshore wind.
Late-season smoke behaves differently from summer smoke. Fires are smaller, but long, calm, clear nights trap what they make. Smoke pools in valleys and stays near the ground until the morning sun mixes it out, so a reading that looks fine at 3 p.m. can be poor at 7 a.m. Fall and winter are also prescribed-burn season in much of the West and Southeast, which produces short, local smoke days on purpose.
The bigger signal for winter is a very strong El Niño, which most models now project to be the strongest on record. It favors a wet southern tier, which should quiet Southern California's offshore-wind fire season, and a warmer, drier northern tier, where drought in the Northwest and northern Rockies is expected to persist into next year. That does not mean December fire in Montana. It does mean next spring starts drier there than it should.
Keep an eye on it
The live smoke map runs all winter, with both forecast models and every active fire in the US and Canada. For how this year stacks up day by day against the 10-year average, see the season pace chart. For when smoke season usually closes where you live, read when does wildfire smoke season end, and for local forecasts, the state directory.
Sources: NIFC WFIGS and SIT-209, CIFFC, NRCan CWFIS, BC Wildfire Service, NIFC outlook, October 1, Climate Central, CNN, and reporting collected on the 2026 Canadian wildfires page. Data pulled October 10, 2026.