2025 Summer Outlook: Wildfires and Drought

WeatherBug in collaboration with meteorologists from AEM have released their Summer 2025 Outlook for Wildfires and Drought. 

The big headlines include deepening drought across central and western sections of the U.S. and Canada, which in turn will cause a high risk of wildfires for this summer across many of these areas.  However, its not all doom and gloom! The 2025 Summer Outlook also highlights plentiful precipitation across the eastern U.S.

In detail, the summer outlook shows a large swath of drought conditions persisting through the summer from southern California across all of Arizona and much of New Mexico into southwest Texas.  Drought will also hang tough across southern portions of Nevada and Utah, and in western Colorado. 

Another area of drought will stretch from southeast Wyoming across all of Nebraska and much of the Dakotas, and could expand into western Iowa and western Nebraska, putting pressure on the western part of the Corn Belt.  Drought is also likely to expand to cover much of Montana and northeast Idaho. 

In contrast, summer thundershowers are likely to wash away all the drought pockets in Florida and up the East Coast.

The widespread drought in the western half of the U.S. will lead to above-normal danger for wildfires from northern Minnesota across parts of the Dakotas into Montana and Idaho.  Above-normal fire danger will also impact Washington, Oregon, and most of California. 

North of the border, high fire danger is seen for much of central and western Canada this summer.  Huge fires are already burning in parts of western Canada, and this is likely to cause occasional outbursts of smoke into the northern U.S. this summer, leading to some poor air quality at times.

WeatherBug and AEM meteorologists also looked at other impacts across the nation.  For example, prolonged drought in the western U.S. decreases river-flows.  This is seen most on the Colorado River, where the huge dams at Lake Mead and Lake Powell are both down to just 33-percent capacity, leading to tightening water restrictions.  Water volumes on the Columbia River will only be 85-percent of normal, leading to less hydroelectricity being generated. 

Another worry in the middle U.S. concerns summer electric supply.  The MISO system operator indicates that electricity will be in tight supply from the northern Plains and western Great Lakes to much of Illinois, if there is a late-summer heatwave.     

The temperature outlook for now through September has strong signals for above-normal temperatures from the western U.S. across the Rockies and western Plains down into west Texas.  Most other areas of the U.S. are likely to be at least somewhat above normal.

In terms of rain, the much of the eastern half of the U.S. is likely to see above normal precipitation.  Parts of Arizona are also favored to have near to above normal rain.  The bad news is that less than normal rainfall is expected from northern California to the Pacific Northwest, and eastwards across the northern Rockies and central and northern Plains.

The 2025 Summer Outlook team included meteorologists Kyle Leahy and Mark Paquette, along with senior meteorologists James Aman and Kevin Winters.