Megafires of the Last Decade
The 50 largest named US wildfires of the last 10 years, ranked by acres burned.
What counts as a megafire? There is no single official definition, but the term is generally used for wildfires that burn over 100,000 acres. A handful of fires each year now exceed 250,000 acres, and a few have crossed 1 million acres — the 2020 August Complex in California hit 1,032,648 acres, the first confirmed "gigafire" in modern US records. These extreme-scale fires result from a combination of climate-driven fuel drying, accumulated fuel loads from decades of fire suppression, longer fire seasons, and overlapping ignitions during extreme weather events like the lightning siege of August 2020.
| Rank | Fire Name | State | Year | Acres Burned | Structures | Cause |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No megafire data available. | ||||||
Why megafires are getting bigger
- Longer fire seasons — earlier snowmelt, later first autumn rains
- Accumulated fuels from a century of aggressive fire suppression
- Hotter, drier summers and more intense droughts
- Overlapping ignitions during lightning outbreaks exceed suppression capacity
- Wildland-Urban Interface expansion puts more structures in harm's way