‘Very different spot’: ODF says 2025 wildfire season has seen much less acreage burned so far, compared to last year
KTVZ
(Update: Adding video, Adding comments by Oregon Dept. of Forestry)
BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) — Millions of acres were burned across Oregon during the 2024 wildfire season. Six “mega-fires” (over 100,000 acres each) burned across Eastern Oregon, and the state spent nearly $350 million to put them out.
But this year, the season looks drastically different. It started much earlier, with the Roweena and Fairy fires sparking in early June.
“Even looking at July last year, we’re in a very different spot,” Oregon Department of Forestry Public Information Officer Jessica Neujahr told KTVZ News on Wednesday.
This year has technically been a much more active season, but last year’s season saw a significant difference in acreage on ODF-protected land.
“On ODF-protected land, we have had 578 fires that have burned 12,533 acres. And then, compared to last year, we had 494 fires,” Neujahr said. “So less fires in numbers, but the acres burned were 257,235 acres.”
That does not include the nearly 100,000-acre Cram Fire, earlier this month in Jefferson and Wasco counties.
ODF says weather patterns have played a major factor
“We’re still seeing these weather patterns with the lightning and the heat and everything like that, but it’s a much more natural wave, I guess you can say,” Neujahr said. “So we have our peak, and then it goes down, and then it pops back up, and then it goes back down.”
August will remain a pivotal point of the wildfire season. The National Interagency Fire Center says August and September will see a significant wildfire risk in the Pacific Northwest.