Summer 2025 Northern North America Wildfire
Above median, but less than 2022-2024
The wildfire season in northern North America is winding down, though it’s not over in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Here’s where the season stands at the end of August.
Wildfire Overview
Alaska saw significantly more area burn this summer than in 2024, just surpassing the symbolically important one million acre level. The Yukon Territory total wildfire area burned was close to last year. Through the end of August, the Northwest Territories had the least area burn since 2021 (but it’s not over). Overall, this was the fourth consecutive year above median wildfire area burned in northern North America, though the total was not nearly as high as 2022 through 2024. The historical context is presented in Fig. 1, showing the individual and combined area burned in Alaska, Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories each of the past 38 years. This illustrates the large interannual variability in burn area in each of the jurisdictions and across the North overall.
While the active burning season in Alaska and the Yukon Territory is largely done, that’s not the case in the Northwest Territories, where a late season heatwave is spurring an increase in wildfire activity. Both Whati, north of Yellowknife, and Fort Providence, on the upper McKenzie River were under mandatory evacuations on the last weekend of August due to active wildfires close to the communities. Jean Marie River, about 160 km downriver from Fort Providence, was under an evacuation alert.
The 2025 monthly distribution of area burned is shown in Fig. 2. July was the most active month across the North, though in the Yukon Territory, June saw nearly as much fire as July.
Northern Canada Wildfire
Wildfire perimeters for northwest Canada as of August 31 are shown in Fig. 3 and I’ve annotated some of the larger or more impactful fires. But to stress again, hot and dry weather the first week of September is going to result in more area burned in the Northwest Territories.
The largest wildfire in northern Canada was the ZF015-25 fire west of Yellowkife, which had burned about 265,000 ha (656,000 acres). The SS014-25 fire was the third largest fire (89,000 ha) at the end of August and was the fire that threatened Fort Providence and jeopardize travel on Highway 3. The early season FS009-25 wildfire in the southwest corner of the NWT was the second largest fire at 110,000 ha (272,000 acres).
There was much less wildfire in the Sahtu region (Great Bear Lake and middle Mackenzie valley) this year compared to last year (e.g. see Fig. 3 in my summary of the 2024 wildfire season, here). The total area burned in the district stood at 118,000 ha (292,000 acres), with over 80 percent of that total from just two fires, VQ034-25 west of the Mackenzie River and VQ018-25 west of Great Bear Lake. In summer 2024, nearly 431,000 ha (1.07 million acres) burned in the region.
In the Yukon Territory, fires in 2025 were concentrated in the Dawson and Mayo areas. The Black Hills Fire south of Dawson was the largest in the Territory at just under 18,000 ha (43,700 acres), while the North Ferry Fire burned about 13,000 ha. The Rabbit Creek Fire (12,500 ha) and several smaller fires frequently produced very smoky conditions at Dawson during June and July. The Mount Dave fire near Beaver Creek impacted traffic on the Alaska Highway and prompted a brief evacuation alert in July.
Alaska Wildfire
As of August 31, the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center analyzed the total area burned for the season at 1,005,179 acres (406,782 ha), the highest since 2022. Large wildfires this summer in Alaska were much more widespread than 2023 or 2024, though there was a complete lack of fire in Southwest Alaska (Fig 4). The largest single fire was the Klikhtentotzna fire west of Allakaket at nearly 118,000 acres (47,700 ha). The Moldy fire near Husila (72,000 acres) and the Christian fire northeast of Fort Yukon (64,000 acres) were the second and third largest fires.
High impact fires included the Bear Creek fire in Denali Borough between Anderson and Healy that burned several primary residences and forced long delays on the Parks Highway in June. The Aggie Creek and Himalaya Road fires north of Fairbanks caused Fairbanks North Star Borough to issue “Go” evacuation notices for a few subdivisions off of the Elliott Highway in late June. The Nenana Ridge Complex, between Ester and Nenana, threatened homes and businesses, and created long traffic delays on the Parks Highway over the July 4th holiday weekend.
With multiple fires close to town, smoke was frequent in Fairbanks in late June and early July. In total, the Airport reported 130 hours with visibility restricted to six miles or less by smoke, making this an unprecedented fourth straight summer with 100 or more hours of smoke.
As sometimes happens, the Alaska wildfire season was compressed into a very short time window. Figure 5 shows the week-by-week area burned: about 85 percent of the seasonal total occurred in the four weeks between summer solstice and July 18.
This jump in wildfire activity in late June was the direct result of two weeks with frequent and widespread thunderstorm activity in the Interior, including more than 50,000 strikes during the five days between June 16-20.
Figure 6 plots the total acreage burned in Alaska since 1950 and highlights the increased frequency of big (million acres or more) seasons. This was the tenth summer so far in the 21st century to burn one million acres or more. In contrast, during the 51 years between 1950 and 2000, there were 12 such summers.
What explains the 10 year cycle in area burned Ak, YT, NWT Figure 1 in the report