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Current stats on Montana’s 2022 fire season: Fire locations, burn sizes, air quality and news coverage
Tracking Montana’s 2021 fire season
With an expansive drought drying out vegetation across the state, 2021 was a particularly active year for Montana wildfires. Montana Free Press tracked the season on this page with hourly updates on the location and size of fires reported in Montana, as well as air quality ratings for communities with monitoring stations.
With cold weather bringing the 2021 fire season to a close in mid-October, MTFP has shifted this page to archive status, summarizing the available data on how the state fared over the course of the summer.
The display below includes the last reported updates provided for the 2021 wildfires that were tracked by the Inciweb incident information system and may exclude fires that aren’t reported through that system. In some cases information for specific fires may be incomplete where agencies haven’t updated Inciweb entries. Fire names in the table below link to more information on the Inciweb website.
Montana’s Department of Natural Resources and Conservation reports that 75% of wildfires as human-caused. Here’s advice for keeping yourself from becoming part of that statistic.
Underground coal seams can burn unnoticed for years. They can also spark raging wildfires. Funding to extinguish them is limited, but a mapping effort is underway to plot the smoldering coordinates.
For the second summer in a row, a wildfire has destroyed homes near the shores of Flathead Lake, offering a stark reminder of the danger fire poses to one of the fastest-growing areas in the state.
How do you know if it’s safe to take a hike today? What exactly is PM2.5? Experts answer those and other smoke-season questions to help you breathe easier.
What led to Flathead Lake’s Boulder 2700 fire, the aftermath, and how local officials, researchers, and Indigenous tribes are working to reduce human-caused wildfires.
