NWT staring at ‘significant fire risk’ in July, August

The latest national wildfire outlook backs up earlier projections that July and August 2025 will see the NWT’s fire danger shift to a new level.

So far, the territory has had a quieter fire season than many other parts of Canada.

In July and August, forecasts suggest that will change and “above-normal” fire risk will surge north, covering most of the NWT below Great Bear Lake.

The NWT’s wildfire agency was already expecting this kind of pattern. The updated forecast comes from the June 13 North American Seasonal Fire Assessment and Outlook, issued by scientists in Canada, the United States and Mexico.

The outlook states that snowmelt occurred “well ahead of normal” in the NWT this year while drought conditions have expanded. The worst of the drought is in extreme northeastern BC, such as the area around Fort Nelson, though much of the NWT also remains drier than it should be.

June’s fire risk is expected to remain near normal in the territory, but July is set to bring a “significant pattern departure from the late June weather,” pushing warm and dry conditions over a much larger portion of the country and elevating fire danger across nearly all of western Canada.

“The warm, dry trend in July continues for August,” the outlook states, and will bring a “significant fire risk” in the southern half of the NWT.

According to the outlook, factors like Pacific Ocean sea surface temperatures and “large scale, longer-term soil moisture deficits” are driving some of the conditions that result in high fire risk.

July and August were also the worst months in the NWT’s 2023 fire season, though that season started with major fires and evacuations in May, events the territory has so far avoided in 2025.

Fort Smith was briefly placed on evacuation alert in May this year when a human-caused fire emerged just east of the town. Later that month, there was some confusion over the evacuation status of Sambaa K’e with a wildfire burning nearby. That fire did not ultimately act in a manner that threatened the Dehcho community, which is already surrounded by large amounts of burn area from 2023.

According to NWT Fire’s website, around 44,000 hectares of the territory have burned so far this year. That’s about a tenth of the area that had burned by this time in 2023, though it’s still many times the area burned in other, quieter years like 2022 and 2021.

This year has been far more active in southern Canada. BC, Alberta and Manitoba all report more than 600,000 hectares burned so far, while Saskatchewan is at about 1.3 million hectares burned.