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Several new fires have emerged over the past 24 hours in the Pacific Northwest, and grown large quickly under hot and breezy conditions. These fires join others that we described in yesterday’s report. Most of these new fires were started by a fast-moving lightning storm which moved through the region on the afternoon of July 22nd. One fire we reported on yesterday, the Little Giant Fire, in the North Cascades was actually started by the first round of lightning, nearly 10 days ago.
Visible satellite imagery of Oregon wildfires blowing up at the end of the afternoon on 7/24/2026Infrared satellite imagery of Oregon Fires blowing up at dusk on 7/24/2026.
Many of the large fires that started over a week ago, especially the ones which were burning in rangelands, had burned much of the fuel that was available to them and gone out, or been extinguished by firefighting. Some of these new fires are burning into the previously burned areas, and are being managed by the same incident management teams that had arrived to fight the first round of fires.
We’ll start with the Akawa Butte Fire, since it has been the most disruptive to populated areas.
The Akawa Butte Fire had minor spread yesterday to the east, in a very limited area. Elsewhere on the fire, control lines which were slammed in once the raging fire got rained on appear to be holding. Good news!
Our maps, below, will take a clockwise route up through Western Oregon to the North Cascades, down thru eastern Washington and Oregon, and back west, roughly along US Route 20, from Burns to Sisters.
Our mapping uses satellite heat detections, with heat less than 6 hours old in red, orange dots are heat from previous 12-24 hours, and yellow dots are heat older than 24 hours, and usually shows areas that are cooling down, or out, if in grass or other light fuels. The heat satellites captured this data at about 3 am on 7/25/2026.
Blue areas in the maps below have burned since 2019.
Despite many new starts west of the Cascade Crest, in both Oregon and Washington, on the morning of 7/25/2026, the only major fires showing heat on overnight satellite heat detections west of the Cascade crestwere the Magnum and Castle fires, burning west of Diamond Lake, on the Umpqua National Forest.
The Magnum and Castle Fires are growing on the Diamond Lake District of the Umpqua National Forest. Other starts here don’t appear to have grown much per the heat detection satellites.Skipping up to the North Cascades, North of Wintrop, the Ptarmigan Fire is burning right on the US/Canada Border, as is imaginatively-named Border 2 Fire.Also in the North Cascades, the Little Giant Fire, west of Lake Chelan, in the North Cascades, is now actually more of a legit Giant, doubling in size over past 24 hours to over 25,000 acres.Moving east, the Kaiser Canyon Fire, on the Collville Reservation, in NE Washington, is still spreading, but not as rapidly as previous days. As mentioned in yesterday’s report, this fire is burning trees in forests that were being managed by the Colvile Tribe for carbon sequestration, with carbon credits from this project being sold to major industrial carbon polluters operating in California.Just east of the Kaiser Canyon Fire, the Modrite Fire, also burning carbon project forests, had little spread over past 24 hours.Moving to NE Oregon, the Paradise Fire, near the Oregon/Washington border, is listed as a high priority for firefighting in the region. This map has Walla Walla at the top. The Hagen Fire on left, has been spreading steadily since 7/16, and is now over 20,000 acres. The Burnt Creek Fire, on Highway 3, on right of map, also started in the first series of storms. It has spread to the south.West of Baker City, the Salmon, Olve Butte, and Anthony Fires have been burning since 7/8/2026, and showed little new spread.East and Southeast of Baker City, Oregon, the Powder River Fire, started about 10 days ago, appears to be out. But to the SE, the Fox and Tartar Fires, on either side of the Snake River, are new, and are growing quickly. South of Baker City, fires in the Cow Camp Complex appear to be out.There is a lot of action in the Burns, Oregon area. Here, the Hat, Bald Mountain, Jackass Butte, Stubble, and Second Flat Fires are all active, and, with the exception of the Stubble Fire, they all made large wind-driven runs yesterday afternoon.In the Owyhee Canyon Country of the SE corner of Oregon, the Big Grass Fire (that’s really the name) has burned perhaps 100 square miles. Rangeland fires in eastern Oregon often convert sagebrush and native grasses to vast expanses of cheatgrass, but there is not much we can do about it. These things are happening at a scale that befuddles management.Previously burned areas which have come back as massive expanses of cheatgrass are visible as lighter-colored areas, south of the current Big Grass Fire, in SE Oregon.North of Burns, with the exception of the new, screamer, Second Flat Fire, the other starts don’t appear to be doing much.West of John Day, the Shingle Fire has exploded onto the landscape, and is over 14,000 acres, up from 8,000 yesterday.Between Bend and Burns, the Henry and Coyote Fires both appear to be out of gas.Northeast of Prineville, the Brewer and Box Springs Fires, both ignited during the first major lightning bust, both continue to kick ass, mainly on their southern flanks.
As noted yesterday, the Box Springs Fire is burning up forest carbon offsets purchased by major California utilities and industrial carbon polluters using consumer and ratepayer money tacked onto their prices. There is an interesting bit of trivia sent to us here: The Opal Mountain Carbon Storage Project was able in finagle a lower insurance set-aside for their project by promising to install ‘a manned fire tower and water tanks’ in their project area to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire losses.
The main body of the Rowe Springs Fire/Crosswhite Fire appears to be done, but the Box Springs Fire is part of the Rowe Creek Complex, I think. MAPPING GEEK NOTE: The Rowe Creek Complex is big/complicated enough that it broke the data format and can’t be filled… This is a problem with KML files, but also can be bad geometry in the source geodatabase. It seems like many of the GIS people on fires aren’t able to repair broken polygon geometry. I’m not sure is this is because the polygons are hosted in a National Feature Service? Aspen Acres Fire has also been broken when trying to show a filled polygon in Google Earth Pro…NE of Madras, near Shaniko, the 567 Little Buck Fire is large, and has burned into a recent fire scar and the Wilcox Fire, which was largely out (from first lightning bust).The Cottonwood Fire continues to spread to the west, in the Hay Creek Complex.East of Mount Hood, the Grasshopper Fire has burned over 2,500 acres of heavy timber and will be with us for awhile. This fire wasn’t on our radar before last night. Farther to the NE, the 8 Mile Fire is burning in rangelands west of Dufur.West of Madras the Beachcomb and Bench Fires were both very active yesterday. These fires are burning in the transition from timber to desert, in pine and juniper, and the Beachcomb, especially, has potential to be a major timber fire as it moves west. East of Madras, the Ten Mile Fire didn’t spread much yesterday.The Akawa Butte Fire expanded slightly to the east from previous mapping, but it had not burned into the 2025 Flat Fire scar. Yellow outline is previous day’s perimeter.Two new fires, Beachcomb and Bench, have started north of the Akawa Butte Fire, west of Madras.The Box Springs Fire north of Prineville had significant growth to the south.
The Ten-Mile Fire is burning NE of Madras, on US Route 97.The Watson or Shingle Fire are burning south of Highway 26, west of John Day.The 567 Fire is burning east of Shaniko.The Cottonwood Fire has burned over ten thousand of acres, joining existing fires in the Hay Creek Complex.New fires are burning south of Burns, Oregon.Several new fires burning in the far SE corner of Oregon, near the Owyhee River.In Washington, on the Colville Reservation, the Kaiser Canyon Complex has grown over 30,000 acres in the past 24 hours, moving toward Omak Lake.
The Kaiser Canyon Fire is also burning up ‘forest carbon offsets’. The Colville Reservation is home to one of the largest carbon offset projects ever contrived, but has seen multiple major fires over the past decade, which means that the people who paid to sequester their carbon pollution in these dry, fire-prone forests aren’t getting much bang for their carbon-washing buck. However, there is no penalty to the purchaser or seller of the offset when this happens. Tribal forestry programs were a major target of forest carbon hustlers in the later 2000s and early teens. The Yurok, Warm Springs, and Colville tribes have sold some of the largest offset projects in the country. A major offset project on Warm Springs lands had to be retired last year after many wildfires resulted in the land actually losing much more carbon than it was able to store. The Warm Springs and Colville areas which were set aside for carbon banking both had very robust fire histories before the projects were sold. Both Opal Springs and Colville carbon projects were put together by a company called Finite Carbon. Dry forests burning in the interior West should not be a surprise to anybody.
Here is a list of companies who have paid the Colville Tribe to sequester carbon to offset pollution from their businesses.
The costs of purchasing these offsets have been passed on to anybody who uses services from these gas, utility and manufacturing companies. And now the supposed climate benefits of this tax have been turned to ash and CO2. The real winners in the whole process are the consultants who have billed millions of staff hours devising the sketchy math and inventory methods that justify paying someone to let nature run its course and grow vegetation – something that is going to happen whether Chevron pays a forest landowner to do something or not. And the tribes have made a lot of money, too, but that can’t replace the forests that have burnt up.
East of the Kaiser Canyon Fire, the Modrite Fire has not spread significantly. The Kaiser Canyon and Modrite Fires are both burning across tribal lands which were being managed to ‘sequester carbon pollution’ under California’s Cap and Trade program – that CO2 is free to roam the atmosphere, again.The (new) Little Giant Fire has burned over 10,000 acres in the North Cascades, west of Lake Chelan.The Hagen Fire east of Pendleton has been actively spreading for over a week and continues to grow steadily.
The Powder River Fire east of Baker City has not shown significant new spread.
Burnt Creek Fire north of Enterprise, which has had some growth in the last 20-40 hours.
