The National Weather Service has 45 active Red Flag Warnings and fire weather alerts spanning 10 states, and the geographic footprint has widened overnight — the fire danger that gripped the Southwest and Northeast a day earlier has now pushed into the mid-Atlantic and Southeast, with new warnings covering Washington, D.C., Georgia and South Carolina.
The total alert count has eased slightly, from 48 Tuesday to 45 today, but the coverage area has grown from eight states to 10. California has dropped off the list, while D.C., Georgia and South Carolina are newly included alongside continuing warnings in Arizona, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York.
Colorado remains the epicenter of the outbreak, with warnings stacked across the southern half of the state: El Paso County around Colorado Springs and Fort Carson, Pueblo County, Las Animas County near Trinidad, the Upper Arkansas River Valley, the Teller County/Rampart Range zone near Pikes Peak, Fremont County around Canon City, the San Juan and La Garita Mountains near Wolf Creek Pass, the San Luis Valley, and the southern Front Range including the Sangre de Cristo and Wet Mountains. In northeastern New Mexico, the National Weather Service says humidity is trending down while winds trend up, with southwest winds of 15 to 20 mph, gusts to 30 mph, and relative humidity as low as 6 percent — conditions the agency calls favorable for rapid fire spread this afternoon and evening.
In the Northeast, the warning zone now covers a dense band of counties across New Jersey and New York, including Bergen, Essex, Union, Passaic, Rockland and Westchester counties, plus New York City’s five boroughs and Long Island’s Suffolk and Nassau counties. The National Weather Service is urging residents in these areas to avoid outdoor burning or any activity that could produce a spark.
A related but separate concern has emerged in Connecticut, where the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection issued an Air Quality Action Day for southern Fairfield, New Haven and Middlesex counties through 11 p.m. EDT, warning that ground-level ozone may approach or exceed unhealthy levels — a sign the same warm, dry pattern driving fire risk is also degrading air quality in parts of the Northeast corridor.
The National Weather Service says a Red Flag Warning means critical fire weather conditions are either underway or expected shortly, and is advising residents to alert local fire officials of the warnings in their area. With the alert footprint now reaching the mid-Atlantic and Southeast for the first time this week, forecasters will be watching whether the pattern continues to expand or begins to contract as it has in California, which fell off today’s list entirely. Residents near New York weather and Denver weather should monitor local conditions closely through the evening burn-ban windows.