The National Weather Service had 39 Red Flag Warnings active Sunday, a sharp pullback from the 88 alerts posted a day earlier, as fire-weather danger retreated from California, Nevada and New York even as Oklahoma joined the list for the first time this week.
Ten states now carry warnings: Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. That’s down from 12 states Saturday, when the alert count peaked for the week. Wyoming carries the heaviest load, with fire weather zones stretching from the Sierra Madre Range and Snowy Range in the south to the Bighorn Basin, Absaroka Mountains and Yellowstone National Park in the northwest.
The new Oklahoma warnings cover 11 counties in the state’s northwest, including Harper, Woods, Alfalfa, Ellis, Woodward, Major, Roger Mills, Dewey, Custer, Beckham and Washita. Colorado’s warning targets the Front Range and Denver metro corridor — Denver, Boulder, Jefferson, Larimer, Douglas, Weld, Adams, Broomfield and Arapahoe counties — where the Storm Prediction Center’s local NWS office flagged west-to-northwest winds of 15 to 25 mph with gusts up to 40 mph west of Interstate 25, paired with relative humidity as low as 8 to 14 percent.
In Idaho, the warning covering the East Salmon River Mountains and the Lemhi and Lost River Range runs from noon to 9 p.m. MDT Sunday, with west winds of 10 to 20 mph gusting to 30 mph and humidity dropping to 10 percent — conditions the weather service says are sufficient to support rapid fire spread. Isolated high-based thunderstorms are also possible across parts of Wyoming, raising the risk of dry lightning strikes on top of the wind and humidity threat.
The Pacific Northwest warnings persist across Washington’s Cascades counties — Benton, Columbia, Franklin, Kittitas, Klickitat, Walla Walla and Yakima — and into north-central Oregon, including Wasco, Wheeler, Jefferson, Crook and the Blue Mountains counties of Umatilla, Union and Wallowa.
Even with the smaller footprint, the pattern remains active: dry fuels, low humidity and gusty afternoon winds continue to align across the interior West, with New Jersey’s coastal warning showing the same wind-humidity combination has pushed east of the Rockies. The National Weather Service will reassess conditions as new alerts are issued through the week.