I Asked Claude to Rank Every U.S. Region by Future Wildfire Risk – The Results Surprised Me

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I’ve spent enough time reading wildfire outlooks that I figured I had a pretty solid mental map of where the real danger sits in this country. California, obviously. Maybe the Rockies. The rest, in my head, was mostly background noise. So I decided to run a different kind of experiment: I asked Claude to walk through every major U.S. region, weigh the current climate and fuel data, and rank them by future wildfire risk. What came back wasn’t a simple “West bad, East fine” list. Some regions I’d mentally filed under “low risk” turned out to be climbing fast, while a couple of the usual suspects looked slightly less apocalyptic than the headlines suggest. Here’s how the ranking shook out, region by region, along with the reasoning behind each placement.

1. The interior Northwest and Northern Rockies

This one topped the list, and honestly, it wasn’t close. Forecasters have flagged this corridor repeatedly in 2026 as the epicenter of national fire risk. Larger, more destructive wildfires are likely this year, with the interior Northwest and the Rockies regions facing the highest risk.

The reasoning holds up when you look at the underlying conditions. The highest wildfire risk is expected across the interior Northwest, the Rockies, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and western Montana. Dense, remote forest combined with erratic snowpack means fires here tend to start small and finish enormous.

2. Southern California and the coastal ranges

California remains a fixture at the top of any wildfire conversation, though the story is more nuanced than pure alarm. Wildfires were reported in all 50 states in 2024, and AccuWeather forecasts 65,000 to 80,000 wildfires this year, compared to 77,850 in 2025 and a historical average of 68,707. Within that national picture, California still carries outsized weight because of its wind patterns and density of homes near wildland.

What’s interesting is that acreage projections for the state actually sit below the historical norm this year. 500,000 to 750,000 acres are predicted to burn in California this year, compared to 525,223 acres in 2025 and the historical average of 1,002,822 acres. That’s a meaningful data point, and one that rarely makes it into the doom-heavy coverage. The underlying threat from Santa Ana wind events hasn’t gone away, but the numbers suggest a slightly calmer year than the long-term average.

3. The Desert Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada)

This region sits right behind the interior Northwest in terms of concern, and for similar reasons: drought, heat, and thin snowpack stacking on top of each other. The same outlook that flagged the Rockies also named this cluster of states directly as high-risk zones for the 2026 season. Fuel conditions here shift quickly from year to year depending on how much monsoon rain arrives, which makes the risk more volatile than in the Pacific Northwest.

There’s also a longer arc worth noting. Climate projections have consistently pointed toward worsening conditions here as temperatures climb and precipitation patterns become less reliable, a trend that shows up across multiple fire seasons rather than as a one-year anomaly.

4. The Southeastern United States

This is where the ranking genuinely surprised me. I expected the Southeast to land near the bottom, given its humidity and green cover. Instead, it showed up as a legitimate concern for 2026. In January 2026, the National Interagency Fire Center issued its National Seasonal Fire Outlook, which projected above-normal wildfire risk for much of Texas, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, and the southeastern United States.

The driver behind that shift is a familiar one. The elevated risk was linked primarily to persistent atmospheric patterns resembling La Niña, which typically reduce precipitation and increase temperatures in these regions. Pine forests across the Southeast burn on their own seasonal rhythm anyway, but a drier-than-usual pattern layered on top pushes the risk noticeably higher.

5. Texas and the southern Plains

Texas deserves its own spot on this list rather than getting folded into the broader Southeast, mostly because of scale and drought severity. In January 2026, the U.S. Drought Monitor reported that 69% of the United States was under drought conditions, with the South being the hardest-hit region, though on January 6, California became drought-free for the first time since 2000. That contrast alone tells you something about how unevenly risk is distributed this year.

Grassland and rangeland fires in this part of the country move fast and can cover enormous ground before crews arrive. Historical events reinforce how quickly things can escalate here. Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas experience rapid-moving prairie fires that can consume thousands of acres in hours, as demonstrated by the March 2017 Northwest Oklahoma Complex Fire, which burned over 830,000 acres in Oklahoma and Kansas.

6. The Northern Great Plains

Grass fires don’t get the same media attention as forest fires, but the Plains states have a long track record of fast, destructive burns once drought sets in. Abnormally dry conditions across the Dakotas and eastern Montana have repeatedly triggered elevated fire danger in past seasons, and the pattern tends to repeat whenever spring rainfall runs short. Fuel loads here are lighter than in forested regions, but wind does the work that dense timber does elsewhere.

The risk profile in this region is also tied closely to agricultural practices. Crop residue burning, when it escapes control during windy stretches, adds a human-caused layer of risk on top of the natural drought cycle, and these fires often occur uncomfortably close to populated areas.

7. The Pacific Northwest lowlands and eastern Washington

Separate from the interior Northwest ranking above, the lower-elevation and eastern portions of Washington and Oregon carry their own distinct risk pattern, driven heavily by grassland and dry forest edges rather than deep timber. Washington’s eastern grasslands and forests and Oregon’s Cascades and eastern dry forests represent a different kind of fuel setup than the wetter coastal strip most people picture when they think of the Pacific Northwest.

Recent seasonal outlooks have flagged this area specifically for early-arriving fire risk. The high-risk period for big wildfires in the West is coming early in many locations as summer’s expected above-normal temperatures and below-normal rainfall follow paltry snowpack, with above-normal significant fire potential forecast across much of the West including the inland Northwest and northern California. That earlier start compresses the window firefighters have to prepare.

8 Alaska’s boreal interior

Alaska sits at the bottom of the frequency curve but not the severity curve, and that distinction matters. Alaska’s boreal forests can burn extensively in hot, dry years. When conditions align, the sheer size of untouched forest means burns can reach scales that dwarf anything in the Lower 48, even though they draw far less national attention because of how remote the terrain is.

What keeps this region from ranking higher is unpredictability rather than mild conditions. A wet summer can shut fire activity down almost entirely, while a hot, dry one can produce smoke plumes that drift thousands of miles south. That volatility is part of why it’s difficult to plan around, and why it landed near the bottom of a ranking built around sustained, escalating risk rather than occasional spikes.