Fire leaders warn of above-normal potential in Montana this summer
Fire leaders said Montana is fully staffed for summer, but Lewis and Clark County could still face faster starts, smoke and evacuation pressure if heat and wind return.
State fire leaders said Tuesday in Helena that Montana enters the core of wildfire season fully staffed, but still facing above-normal fire potential in eastern Montana through July and in southwest Montana in July, with risk expanding into the Bitterroot in August.
Gov. Greg Gianforte joined local, state and federal agency administrators and fire management officers at the 2026 Montana Fire Season Briefing, where the message centered on three pressure points: the weather, the people available to respond and the tools meant to catch new fires before they grow. Predictive meteorologist Dan Borsum said the winter and spring were complicated by drought in some areas, major wind events and warmer temperatures, even as recent precipitation helped. The outlook warned that a recent weekend storm system improved short-term conditions, but said a lack of follow-up moisture could quickly return the state to higher fire potential.
For Lewis and Clark County residents, the stakes are practical. A fast-moving fire season can mean earlier evacuation alerts, shorter windows for initial attack and more smoke drifting into neighborhoods, schoolyards and work sites around Helena, East Helena and the surrounding valleys. DNRC says May through September is Montana’s core wildfire season, and state officials said they are betting on speed, coordination and detection to keep small starts from becoming large incidents.
The state is leaning on new infrared-equipped aircraft that can identify hot spots long before smoke becomes visible, along with an interactive wildland fire map and other detection and dispatch tools. DNRC says all wildlands in Montana have some form of fire protection, covering 50,265,678 acres of state and private land, including 5.2 million acres under direct protection, with roughly 400 fire departments helping provide county cooperative fire protection. DNRC officials said they are fully staffed for the season, a key assurance for communities that could be affected by multiple fires at once.
Budget and planning remain part of the readiness picture. Gianforte said the state’s fire suppression fund has enough runway to reach its August 15 refill date, and a state wildfire planning document says House Bill 883 appropriated $30 million annually for suppression, fuel reduction, forest restoration and forest management projects on private, state and federal lands. The warning behind the briefing was clear: even after a relatively light 2025 fire year, when Montana burned about 76,000 acres, the season still produced costly danger, including the Windy Rock Fire in Powell County, which cost about $56 million to fight.
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