The National Weather Service has 73 Red Flag Warnings active Friday, up from 61 a day earlier even as the geographic footprint narrowed from 11 states to nine — a sign that fire-weather conditions are intensifying rather than merely spreading.
North Dakota, Nevada and Utah dropped off the warning list Friday, while Tennessee rejoined after falling off Thursday. The current footprint covers Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New York, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington and Wyoming.
The most striking expansion is along Colorado’s Front Range, where warnings now blanket nearly the entire Denver metro area and adjacent mountain counties: Denver, Boulder, Jefferson, Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas, Broomfield, Larimer, Weld, Elbert, Park, Summit, Clear Creek, Morgan, Jackson, Grand and Gilpin counties are all under warning.
In Washington, the alert zone has shifted toward the Puget Sound corridor, with King, Pierce, Snohomish, Kitsap, Mason and Thurston counties all flagged — bringing critical fire weather to the state’s most populated region rather than just its typically drier eastern half.
Montana’s warnings are concentrated around the Helena National Forest, covering the Lincoln Ranger District and the Helena and Townsend Ranger Districts, along with central and eastern portions of the Lewis and Clark National Forest.
Wyoming remains the epicenter by volume of individual zones. The National Weather Service office in Riverton has warnings in effect from noon to 9 p.m. MDT across Fremont, Sublette and Carbon counties and more than a dozen fire weather zones spanning central, southwest and west-central Wyoming, with west winds of 15 to 25 mph. Elsewhere, forecasters report relative humidity as low as 9% and east winds of 5 to 15 mph gusting to 30 mph in some zones.
The National Weather Service says the combination of strong winds, low relative humidity and warm temperatures across these areas can allow fires to catch and spread quickly, and is urging extreme caution with any outdoor burning. Officials describe the setup as capable of producing erratic fire behavior if new ignitions occur.
With 73 warnings now active and the pattern shifting toward heavily populated corridors in Colorado and Washington rather than easing, forecasters are watching whether the elevated fire danger holds through the weekend or begins to relax as conditions evolve into next week.