Colorado’s dry winter and abnormally warm spring will translate to a high risk for large and destructive wildfires this summer, state leaders warned Thursday.
“We are facing a very challenging fire year where our resources will be tested, across not only Colorado but across the West,” said Mike Morgan, the director of , at a news conference announcing .
The Front Range and northwestern Colorado face the highest risk of fire through June and July, Gov. Jared Polis said. The plains east of Interstate 25 will also face increased risk during windy days until the grasses turn green, according to the outlook.
But every corner of the state will be vulnerable.
Drought covered all of Colorado as of Tuesday, according to . Much of the northwest corner of the state was categorized as in exceptional drought — the most severe category used by the monitor. The Denver metro was in extreme drought, the second-most-severe category.
At this time last year, only 44% of the state was in drought, and none of that drought was classified as exceptional.
“We haven’t had enough rain and we haven’t had enough snow — and it’s going to be a challenging year for us,” Morgan said.
The impact of this winter’s record-low snowpack on the upcoming fire season is difficult to overstate, said , a researcher at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, who studies climate, wildfires and mountain forests across the West.
“It’s simply drier, so it’s easier to ignite, and if it does ignite, it spreads more easily through the forest,” he said.
The precipitation that fell across the Front Range and central mountains in recent days will do little to reverse months of warm, dry weather, Polis said Thursday during the briefing at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport near Broomfield. It’s unclear how strong the summer monsoon pattern will be this year, and it’s unclear whether it will bring late-season moisture, according to the outlook.
Much of the West faces a similarly grim fire outlook, Polis said. That means that resources shared regionally — like federal firefighters and equipment — will be in high demand and hard to come by.
The higher wildfire risk and strain on firefighting resources mean that Colorado will not allow any fires to burn longer than necessary, Morgan said. In past years, fire officials have allowed fires to continue burning if they did not pose a threat and provided ecological benefit.
The state in recent years has significantly increased its own firefighting capacity, including by purchasing several planes and helicopters. But in that same time period, climate change, drought and an increasing number of people living in wildfire-prone areas have increased risk, Polis said.
Between 6,000 and 7,000 wildfires spark in Colorado during an average fire year, and fire crews contain the vast majority of them before they become large and destructive, Morgan said. About 90% of those fires are caused unintentionally by people, he said.
All of the 10 largest wildfires in Colorado history have . Four of the top five have burned since 2020.
“Since the 1990s, the number, intensity, complexity, and impacts of wildfires in Colorado have been growing exponentially and experts predict that it will continue to
worsen,” the fire outlook report states.
Climate change is increasingly shaping wildfires, Kulakowski said. Vegetation dries out faster as temperatures warm, allowing fires to ignite more easily and spread more rapidly.
Repeated warm years give plants little opportunity to recover.
“For a long time, there have been forecasts and predictions about the amplification of wildfires,” Kulakowski said. “We had a lot of time — this isn’t a surprise to anyone who’s been studying this for the past couple of decades. But we’re here now, (and) this is happening.”
Regional leaders from the U.S. Forest Service and the newly created said they planned to hire as many firefighters as they had previously. Budget cuts to the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior will not impact firefighting capabilities, they said.
While summer wildfires are inevitable, federal disaster aid to help those impacted by blazes is no longer dependable.
The Trump administration in recent months has denied access to millions of dollars in federal disaster recovery money, including for the Lee and Elk fires that burned more than 137,000 acres in northwest Colorado last August.
Polis said post-fire recovery is much more difficult and slow without federal dollars.
“We hope that federal partnership comes back,” Polis said, noting that the state has counted on federal disaster relief for years.
Firefighters have already battled several wildfires this year, including the 2,100-acre currently burning east of Trinidad. The term “fire season” is irrelevant in Colorado these days because the risk is not contained to seasons, said Stan Hilkey, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Safety.
Polis and other state leaders urged Coloradans to and harden their properties so they’ll be less susceptible to flames.
“Let the professionals do the fireworks this year,” Morgan said.
Fires not only impact those who live near the flames but also water resources, insurance rates and air quality, officials said.
“Fire is a problem for all of us,” Morgan said. “It doesn’t matter where you live in Colorado or the Western United States.”
