There are many wildfires ablaze in the Western part of the United States. Very dry and hot conditions combined with winds fanning the flames have pushed the number of fires and the amount of acreage burnt up. The wildfire season usually starts in April, so it still is early on in the season.
As the below infographic based on data published by the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI, part of NOAA) shows, it has already been one of those years with a vast amount of acres burnt. Especially, taking into account that this chart only depicts data for the first half of the year, and this year's June numbers haven't been taken into account yet.
2002, 2006 and especially 2011 stick out as years in which the total burnt acreages was high in the first six months. 4.8 million acres were burnt in 2011 in more than 36,000 fires of all sizes. A million acres are about half the size of Puerto Rico or four times the size of New York City. This year 2.8 million acres have been incinerated until the end of May. If weather conditions don't change dramatically this year is likely to be an outstandingly fiery one.
Wildfires in the United States
Natural Hazards
Description
This chart shows the number of wildfires and acres burnt in the Unites States (1st half of year)
