07/19/2026
Oregon Wildfires: 2024 vs. 2026 🔥
Looking at these two maps from July 18th, they both look incredibly overwhelming—but the story behind the numbers is totally different.
• Today (2026): We are playing whack-a-mole with 85+ active fire starts across the state after a massive lightning storm dumped 2,000+ strikes. It’s a massive strain on resources with so many individual blazes scattered everywhere.
• This Day in 2024: We were facing fewer total individual fires (around 45 active incidents), but we were being scorched by historic mega-fires. On this exact day, the Cow Valley Fire was already over 133,000 acres and the Falls Fire was over 110,000 acres.
•More individual fires today, but massive, record-breaking acreages back then. A huge shoutout to all the crews on the lines keeping us safe! 🙌🏻🙏🏻