Season Update: The Ramp Into July

Editorial note.This entry is part of a catch-up series published August 4, 2026, reconstructing the weeks in which the journal did not update while the automated data feeds continued running. Facts are drawn from the public record for the period covered and from PCSN’s own daily snapshots. In keeping with our corrections policy, we date the entry to the period it covers and flag it here rather than presenting it as contemporaneous.

The corridor entered July the way the spring data said it would. Snowpack across the eleven-state corridor finished the water year at roughly 21% of normal, with five states effectively at zero by the last week of May. PCSN’s season-severity index crossed into HIGH in mid-June and did not come back down. On June 13 our daily snapshot logged 49 active corridor fires on about 102,000 acres. Those numbers now read like a different season.

Washington Burned First

While the June headlines concentrated on heat records, eastern Washington quietly assembled the worst June fire ledger in the state’s recent history. The Tule Fire in Yakima County reached 18,625 acres by June 15. The Juniper Dunes Fire crossed 10,500 acres, the Tucannon Fire in Columbia County reached 9,500, and the Lambdin Fire near Walla Walla closed the month at roughly 13,300 acres. The Upriver Fire in Spokane County killed one person and destroyed or damaged at least 15homes — the season’s first fatality, in the same county that would be the site of far worse five weeks later.

None of this happened without warning. Washington’s Department of Ecology declared a statewide drought emergency in early April. The legislature appropriated $120 million for firefighting this biennium, double the previous year. The U.S. Drought Monitor carried eastern Washington in moderate-to-extreme drought through the entire period, an area home to roughly 1.8 million people.

What the Index Said

The season-severity index is designed to be boring: a weighted composite of snowpack deficit, early-season fire activity, drought class, vapor-pressure-deficit anomaly, ENSO state, air quality, suppression capacity, and insurance stress. It entered July in the mid-50s, HIGH, driven by the snowpack term sitting near its ceiling and an early-season fire term that was already tracking weeks ahead of the historical calendar. The capacity-loss term — the one that prices in the federal workforce reductions documented in The Recall — was carrying a static 90 all spring. The index would not stay in the 50s for long.

Current conditions are always on the dashboard, and the daily pre-registered snapshots that this entry draws on are logged on the scorecard.