A wildfire in Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona has burned for nearly a month in exceptionally dry, hot weather, growing into the largest wildfire of the year so far in the continental United States, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
The Dragon Bravo fire, which has closed the park’s North Rim, grew to more than 114,000 acres on Saturday. Its size is expected to increase in coming days because of dry, warm weather.
The fire was 11 percent contained as of Saturday, according to InciWeb, a government site that tracks wildfires.
“We’re kind of locked in a dry, breezy, abnormally hot pattern because our monsoon hasn’t showed up,” said Benjamin Peterson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Flagstaff, Ariz.
A seasonal shift in winds typically brings moisture from the Gulf and the Pacific Ocean to the Southwest starting in late June through September. Thunderstorms wet the landscape, and the air is humid. Not this year. The monsoon season has been very dry so far, the third driest ever, Mr. Peterson said. Many areas of Arizona saw below-normal rainfall in July.
A gauge in the park measured about an inch of rain in July, with most of it falling early in the month. That’s more than a half an inch less than normal.
Humidity levels are expected to drop into the single digits this weekend. Low humidity means the air is dry, which pulls moisture from the vegetation, making it more flammable.
There’s hope, though, that the monsoon season will pick up.
“So far, the monsoon season has only existed in short bursts,” Mr. Peterson said. “It could be delayed, and we could catch up. Longer-range models do not really support this, but it only takes a very wet week or two to change that.”
A lightning strike on July 4 ignited the Dragon Bravo fire, which was named after a rock formation called the Dragon that’s close to where the blaze started. “Bravo” was added to the name to differentiate it from a previous Dragon fire in the same general area in 2022.
In Alaska, the Klikhtentotzna fire in Yukon-Koyukuk has burned for more than a month. It covered more than 118,000 acres as of Saturday, making it the largest in the country.
National Park Service officials initially allowed the Dragon Bravo fire to burn, a forest management tool used to improve the health of a forest by thinning overgrown vegetation that can serve as fuel for catastrophic fires.
In the days that followed, the fire slowly grew.
Then, on July 11, strong winds developed and the fire jumped containment lines, burning the Grand Canyon Lodge. Dozens of other structures were destroyed, including the North Rim Visitor Center and several guest cabins.
Gov. Katie Hobbs of Arizona has called for an investigation into why the federal government decided to manage the fire as a “controlled burn.”
Firefighters are now actively fighting the wildfire.
“This is a full suppression,” said Lisa Jennings, a spokeswoman for the Southwest Area Incident Management Team, which is overseeing the firefighting operations.
The fire has shut down the North Rim and all hiking trails in this remote area of the national park. The South Rim, which gets 90 percent of the park’s visitors, remains open.
Trails between the two rims, including the Bright Angel and the Kaibab trails, are closed because of poor air quality from smoke. The mile-deep Grand Canyon cuts between the North Rim and South Rim, providing a natural fire break.
The fire burning on the North Rim is visible 11 miles away on the South Rim.
“In the Grand Canyon Historic Village area, if you look directly north, the fire is at 12 o’clock, right across the canyon,” Ms. Jennings said. “You can see the flames at night. You can see clouds of smoke during the day.”
The fire has been burning through dense, mixed conifer forest with trees, including Douglas fir, more than 100 feet tall on the North Rim. The vegetation is extremely parched and flammable from the dry, windy weather.
“This fire behavior we’re seeing is unprecedented,” Ms. Jennings said. “We have had consistently gusty winds with this dry spell for the past eight days. There’s lots of fuel to burn through.”
Ms. Jennings said the topography of the Grand Canyon had made fighting the fire especially challenging as wind was funneled through the canyon and the smaller finger canyons, causing the wind to accelerate. The wind has been carrying burning embers more than a mile away and rapidly spreading the wildfire.
“The canyon creates its own weather,” Ms. Jennings said. “It’s hard to even get across how complex the situation is here.”
The most active part of the fire is just outside the park in the Kaibab National Forest. Firefighters are focused on protecting the Kaibab Lodge and its guest cabins, five miles from the North Rim entrance. The fire is close to the lodge but on the other side of Highway 67, which is the entrance road into the North Rim.
Amy Graff is a Times reporter covering weather, wildfires and earthquakes.
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