Smoke from the Jones Road fire, seen from the Garden State Parkway. (Photo by Famartin, CC-BY-SA 4.0.)

George Harvey

To understand wildfires in the Northeast, it may be helpful to start with the United States as a whole. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the number of wildfires in the U.S. does not appear to have changed much over the forty years from 1983 to 2022. What has changed markedly is their size, the size of the area these wildfires have burned (tinyurl.com/EPAClimateIndicators).

In general, the number of wildfires stays at between 30,000 and 70,000 per year, without a clear trend up or down over time. The total area burned, however, while it also increases and decreases, has had an upward trend. It was about 20 million acres in 1983 and grew to an average of almost 90 million by 2020. So, it might be about four times as great as it was forty years ago. The amount of damage to the value of land and real estate is on a similar upward trend.

The wildfires burned a greater area and did more damage because they have been growing bigger than they had been forty years earlier. A major reason they are burning more is that they spread much faster today than they did in the past. This is largely because of climate change.

The fuel for wildfires, largely vegetation, is generally drier and warmer than it was in the past, so it is easier for a fire to catch. The more extreme weather of climate change can make winds faster, and high winds spread fires quickly. The fire season is also longer than it once was, and the dry season lasts longer. Even heavy rain and flooding can make things worse, because the rain can encourage plants to grow, only to wither if the rain is followed by a summer drought.

The biggest increases in wildfire size and severity have been in the West. California, Oregon, and Washington have had horrible fires, along with Idaho, Montana, and Arizona. Texas and Oklahoma have also had large increases in wildfires.

The rest of the United States has been a mixed bag for the most part. Some states had increases in the areas burned by wildfires, and others had decreases. In particular, there was a significant decrease in wildfires in West Virginia (tinyurl.com/NEUSWildfires).

That was the picture through 2022. One thing about climate change, however, is that it changes.

In 2024, there was a drought in much of the Northeast, especially in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and the area around New York City. In some places, September set a record as the driest month so named on record, and October set its own record. Between October 1 and November 11, 537 wildfires were reported in New Jersey and another 60 in New York. Mayor Adams of New York City banned grilling because of fires. Brush fires caused Amtrak to cancel service between Penn Station and New Haven at one point, for 24 hours.

That was in 2024, but 2025 was worse in some ways. The Jones Road fire in Ocean County, New Jersey grew rapidly and was very disruptive. The fire broke out on April 22, and by that evening, it had spread to cover 8,500 acres. It caused evacuations and at least one building was burned down (tinyurl.com/JonesRoadFire).

One thing that the Jones Road fire did on its first day was to threaten the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant. Reportedly, it got close and embers blew onto the nuclear plant’s property, starting a small fire that was put out by the power station’s firefighters (tinyurl.com/JonesRdOysterCreek).

The Oyster Creek nuclear plant was closed down in 2018, and it has had no fuel in the reactor for several years. Because there is no final repository for spent nuclear fuel, however, all the plant’s spent fuel was at the plant. We really don’t want that to burn.

We are reminded that all thermal plants, which use heat to create energy, need cooling. This includes coal, oil, gas, and nuclear plants. They cannot operate if it gets too hot for the cooling system to work properly or if a drought leaves them with insufficient cooling water. We have, in fact, had reports of one coal-burning plant that had to stop operations because a drought left it without water. We are better off with renewable energy.

The overall situation in the Northeast leaves us asking whether climate change will make the fire danger become permanent. The answer to that may have less to do with chance than to the amount of greenhouse gases we allow into the atmosphere. We must do much better on the climate.