Montana fire season worse than 2000, '03
The Adair Fire as seen from the lookout.
With cooler, wetter weather finally arriving in Montana, another historic fire season appears to at least be setting itself to simmer, if not completely out. The largest fire was the Lodgepole Complex near Jordan at 270,723 acres. The largest local fire was the Rice Ridge Fire, which burned near Seeley Lake and deep into the Bob Marshall Wilderness at 160,170 acres.
All told, major wildfires in Montana burned about 1.3 million acres this year, according to the Northern Rockies Coordination Center. That’s more than the historic fires of 2000 (949,817 acres) and 2003 (736,809 acres) and 2007 (778,079 acres).
Glacier Park in 2003 saw much more fire than this year, more than 140,000 acres, or about 10 percent of its land mass.
Here’s a list of the major fires across the state, according to inciweb.org, which tracks fires and other natural disasters across the country:
- Adair Peak, Glacier National Park, 4,034 acres
- Alice Creek, near Lincoln, 29,252 acres
- Blacktail, near Wilsall, 5,351 acres
- Blue Bay, near Polson, 490 acres
- Blue Ridge complex, near Jordan, 3,034 acres
- Buffalo, near Broadus, 3,020 acres
- Burdette, near Superior, 655 acres
- Caribou, near West Kootenai, 24,753 acres
- Chinn near White Sulphur Springs, 7,091 acres
- Conrow, near Whitehall, 2,741 acres
- Crucifixion Creek, near Heart Butte, 11,003 acres
- Crying, near Winnett, 7,925 acres
- East Fork, near Havre, 21,896 acres
- Elder Creek, Glacier National Park, 282 acres
- Gibralter Ridge, near Eureka, 12,725 acres
- Green Ridge Complex, Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, 4,769 acres
- Highway 200 complex, near Thompson Falls and Plains, 47,118 acres
- July, near Zortman, 11,699 acres
- Liberty, near Arlee, 28,689 acres
- Lodgepole Complex, near Jordan, 270,723 acres
- Lolo Peak, near Lolo, 53,753 acres
- Maurer Mountain, near Dillon, 3,000 acres
- McCully, near Thompson Falls, 637 acres
- Mendenhall, near McLeod, 1,275 acres
- Monahan, Bob Marshall Wilderness, Powell County, 3,609 acres
- Moose Peak, near Trout Creek, 12,624 acres
- Park Creek, near Lincoln, 18,000 acres
- Reef, near Count Peak, Bob Marshall Wilderness, 10,658 acres
- Rice Ridge, near Seeley Lake, 160,170
- Sapphire Complex, near Rock Creek, 43,733 acres
- Sartin Draw, near Ashland, 99,735 acres
- Scalp, near Bow Mountain, Bob Marshall Wilderness, 21,104 acres
- Sprague, Glacier National Park, 16,790 acres
- Strawberry, near Swift Reservoir, 30,461 acres
- Sunrise, near Superior, 26,310 acres
- Tongue River Complex, 28,957, acres
- Weasel, near Eureka, 3,925 acres
- West Fork, near Libby, 19,497 acres