Weather Update

Alaska's interior weather has been relatively more favorable for fire suppression in the past couple of weeks, but nevertheless fire acreage has continue to move up at a rather steady pace, and is nearing the million acre mark.  This puts the 2025 season squarely in the above-normal category for acres burned; the long-term median is about half a million acres burned per year.

According to NWS estimates, there has been above-normal rainfall across a swath of the interior in the past two weeks, but southeastern and northwestern interior areas have been much drier.  With a fairly strong warm signal in the 6-10 day forecast, it seems there's still a risk for fire activity to ramp up again, although of course summer will be waning fast in just a few weeks.

The cumulative lightning chart shows the drop-off in thunderstorm activity since July 8: this year has dropped to 6th place for ground lightning strikes (2012-present data).

It's interesting to note the bifurcation in cumulative strikes as of late July: based on the very limited history since 2012, it seems there is a bi-modal distribution of either "active" or "inactive" years up to this time of year.  2025 certainly qualifies as unusually active after the lightning onslaught in June.  Here are the annual year-to-date lightning strike counts as of July 20:

A map comparison of July (so far) versus June lightning strike density shows the decline this month, with much-reduced activity for most areas except for central locations from near Bettles down towards Minchumina.