Vermont Had Its Worst Brush/Forest Fire Season In Nearly A Decade

Satellite view of smoke blowing into New York City from
wildfires in neighboring northern New Jersey. Vermont
fires weren't as bad, but this year is now the states' worst
fire year since 2016.

Yes, Vermont did have a lot of forest and brush fires during our bone dry autumn, helping make 2024 the worst fire year in the Green Mountain State since at 2016, as WCAX first reported this week. 

Through Tuesday, 83 wildfires have burned 175.84 acres in the state during 2024, according to the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.  

In 2016, wildfires burned through 389 acres. The years 2020 and 2021 had a slightly greater number of fires than this year, but the total acreage burned was less than we saw this year, according to state forestry statistics. 

The worst of the fires happened near Barnard, where a forest fire caused by the improper disposal of hot ashes started on October 27, burned 70 acres and took near two weeks to extinguish. 

Although autumn brush and forest fires sometimes occur, spring is normally the biggest fire season. After the snow melts, dry brush, leaves and sticks from the previous year dry out quickly in the warm seasonal sunshine.  Spells of very dry air that time of year are common, worsening the drying trend.

Autumn are often stormy, so the ground is more often than not too wet in October and November to allow for much in the way of fires.

Not this year. 

Springtime, 2024 was an unremarkable Vermont fire season. There were some, like there are every year, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary. A wet summer made it seem like it would turn out to be a fairly easy fire year. 

Then the rain shut off in September. The leaves fell from the trees like they always do in October. With no rain, they dried out and became fuel for fires in a seemingly endless streak of dry, windy Vermont autumn days. 

Vermont wasn't even nearly the worst fire zone in the Northeast. New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey an Pennsylvania had be far larger and more intense fires than in the Green Mountain State.  One blaze in New Jersey killed a firefighter. The outbreak of fires sent smoke pouring into big cities like New York and Boston, triggering air pollution alerts. 

Vermont and the rest of the heavily forested Northeast have always been prone to brush and forest fires, but at least in recent decades, have tended to be far less intense than the ones we see in California another areas of the West. 

Climate change, though, is growing the threat of eastern forest fires. Sometimes, climate change makes the East wetter, which explains the serious floods up and down the Eastern Seaboard, including here in my home state of Vermont.

But if the weather patterns keeps those wetter storms away, things can get fiery in a hurry. More so than in the past. As the Washington Post notes:

"As average temperatures rise and warmer air sucks more moisture out of landscapes, firefighters across the country say they are more frequently battling blazes at unexpected times of year, and in more places."

Additionally, relatively intense fires are increasing in the Northeast. The landscape is also more fragmented into housing developments, meaning the region has more property at risk than many areas of the West. 

Back here in Vermont, snow has covered most of the state in the past week, so new fires are obviously unlikely. The Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation is still compiling forest fire data for the year, so the figures I cited above might not be final.

We also have no way of knowing yet whether dry weather will return for the spring Vermont fire season. We'll just have to wait to find out.