Colorado Faces Elevated Wildfire Risk As Conditions Outpace Historic Fire Seasons

By Nick Smith | The Gazette

Colorado’s blistering, dry and breezy conditions have fire officials on edge as the state braces for a wildfire season forecast to be worse than during the Waldo Canyon fire in 2012.

Officials warn that wildfires are becoming more frequent, more destructive and larger.

“We are not looking good for fire this year,” Colorado Springs Fire Marshal Kris Cooper told the city council on Monday. “It’s got the fire department on pins and needles.”

According to Tracy LeClair, a spokesperson for The Wildland Fire Management Section of the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control, conditions are a “magnitude worse” than those ahead of major historic wildfires in the state, such as the Waldo Canyon and Black Forest fires.

The two fires stand as the state’s second- and fourth-most destructive fires.

The division’s 2026 wildfire risk assessment report says the western U.S. is in an “exceptional drought,” which happens once every 50 years or so. Some analyses based on tree-ring data report that the southwest has been in a megadrought for over two decades, the driest the region has been in 1,200 years.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT THE GAZETTE