Akawa Butte Blowup and Rain, PNW Forest Carbon Projects Get Smoked! – 7/22/2026

Akawa Butte Fire Pushes Toward Sisters as Lightning Bust Ignites New Blazes Across Oregon

Date: July 22, 2026
Location: Sisters, Oregon, broader Pacific Northwest, California

Last week, a volatile mix of dry fuels, hot temperatures, and fast-moving thunderstorms pushed Oregon’s fire season into high gear, with multiple large fires breaking out from the eastern slopes of the Cascades around Bend all the way to NE Washington. Over the past week, many of the fires have burned themselves out of fuel, or grow slowly across remote rangelands and forests. The Akawa Butte Fire north of Sisters, however, threatens several densely-built communities, and has spread steadily 2-3 miles per day for the past 5 days across dense second-growth timberlands, with intense afternoon runs, evacuations, and thick smoke.

On Wednesday, because of intense fire behavior moving toward Sisters and Black Butte Ranch, The Lookout Livestream, had two separate broadcasts about the Akawa Butte Fire. We also looked at the Rowe Creek Complex, the Kaiser Canyon Fire on the Colville Reservation in NE Washington, and the Rock and Biscar Fires, in California.

Watch our full video briefing here, or scroll down for undated mapping from the night of 7/22/2026.

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Major Run Toward Sisters

The Akawa Butte Fire, which started roughly a week ago, has been actively spreading for the past five days. On Wednesday afternoon (July 22),

• The fire moved roughly a mile and a half south during the afternoon.
• Had advanced to about Calliope Crossing and the area around Stevens Canyon Road at Indian Ford Road by around 4:00 p.m.
• Was pushing toward Sisters strongly enough that authorities began evacuating areas around Sisters, with mandatory evacuations also reported near Camp Sherman and down to Highway 20.

Here is current mapping (morning of 7/22/2026) for the fire.

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Thunderstorms: Brief Rain, Heavy Lightning, Limited Relief

The afternoon brought a fast-moving thunderstorm over central Oregon, which briefly dumped heavy rain on parts of the region.

Key points from our weather breakdown:

• The moisture was linked to Tropical Storm Elida, which moved up the coast and pushed a surge of tropical moisture into Oregon.
• Radar and satellite imagery showed strong storm cores with potential for heavy rain, but very short durations of rain over any one location.
• Immediately after the storms passed, dry air swept in, a classic setup for dry or only marginally wet thunderstorms.
• There were many strikes on the west side of the Cascades, around Portland, and off the coast.

• Viewers and contacts in the field reported:
  • Around 2,000 lightning strikes in parts of Oregon.
  • New starts on Mary’s Peak near Corvallis, Buck Mountain northeast of Eugene, and Hell’s Hill in Lane County.
  • One new fire between the Akawa and Brewer fires.

As of this morning, there are no reports of any of the new fires growing large, yet, with the exception of an 800 acre fire 10 miles NE of Madras, Oregon.

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Fuels, Thinning, and Why Akawa Is Burning So Hard

Heavy Fuels in a Transformed Landscape

North and northeast of Sisters, much of the landscape used to be stands of large widely spaced ponderosa pine that experienced frequent low-intensity fire.

Over the past century, logging and fire suppression have turn many of the forests into:

• • Dense stands of small, stressed ponderosa pine, with branches full of dwarf mistletoe.

Much of the Akawa Butte Fire is burning on privately-owned lands, formerly owned by the Weyerhauser Company. These areas (and adjacent US Forest Service lands) were replanted after decades of ‘high-grading’ which removed all the largest, most fire-resistant trees. The private timberlands have received far less systematic fuels treatment than adjacent Forest Service lands.

Fuels Work Around Sisters – But Mostly to the West

The Sisters Ranger District on the Deschutes National Forest is widely regarded as a national leader in mechanical thinning and prescribed burning.

Most of the thinning and burning work has been concentrated west of Sisters, where the Forest Service owns the land, and managers built treatment blocks to defend against the prevailing west winds that traditionally push fires east out of the Cascades.

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Complex Winds and 360-Degree Risk

Local topography and weather make the Akawa Butte situation unusually complex.

• Westerly winds tend to split around Black Butte, creating:
  • Local wind fields that can come from almost any direction on the eastern side.
• Under thunderstorm outflow or strong winds accompanying a frontal passage/trough, this sets up a nightmare scenario where:
  • Camp Sherman, Black Butte Ranch, Sisters, Redmond, and surrounding communities could all be threatened,
  • Potentially the fire could spread in multiple directions at once.

    

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Where Operations Stand: Ground Lines vs. Fire Behavior

Here is the operations map for the 7/23 day shift, based on last night’s perimeter.

• Dozer line had been constructed along the south edge of the fire, but this was lost in yesterday’s spread. New lines have been pushed since the rain, not shown on  this map.
• The fire has blown past many attempts to corral it. Only the northern and NE portions of the fire have been controlled.

Aerial Resources: Helpful but Limited in a Major Run

Viewers reported watching helicopter drops along the advancing edge. These can have value in protecting individual structures, but have little impact on the larger fire’s spread under extreme conditions:

• Once a fire is thousands of acres and running hard, helicopters and air tankers are largely symbolic or tactical tools in specific spots. They rarely change the overall outcome without cooperation from weather and fuels.

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Other Significant Fires: Rowe Creek Complex, Biscar, Rock, and More

While Akawa Butte is currently the top priority incident in the Pacific Northwest Geographic Area, our briefing highlighted several other active fires:

Rowe Creek Complex (Oregon)

• Satellite imagery showed portions of the Rowe Creek Complex blowing up Wednesday afternoon with dark brown smoke plumes punching up through thunderstorms and strong heat signatures before and during the storm passage. These areas were on the SW side of the complex, where the 130,000 acre+ main body of the fires burned into the Box Springs Fire.

• Conditions have kept many web cameras smoked in around Shaniko, Madras, and other parts of north-central Oregon.

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Regional Fire Picture: Akawa Butte at Top Priority

We recommend you check out The Lookout’s Links page, where you can find the websites we rely on for reporting active wildfires and providing wildfire education.

In particular, visit the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center (NWCG), which posts a daily morning report ranking fires by priority.

As of Wednesday morning’s briefing:

• Akawa Butte Fire was listed as the highest priority incident in Oregon and Washington.
• Other high-priority incidents included the Paradise Fire near Pendleton, the Hagen Fire near Hermiston/Pendleton, and the Kaiser Canyon Fire, largely on the Colville Reservation, which has already burned numerous structures.

Below those top-tier incidents, fires with higher containment or lower immediate threat—such as the Hay Creek Complex north of Madras and the East Evans Creek Road near Grants Pass—were ranked lower due to higher containment.

With new lightning starts across the northwest and hot, windy conditions forecast for the weekend, the resource picture could tighten further, and triage of fires threatening communities will only intensify.

For now, only a couple of the major fires in Eastern Oregon and Washington have been showing significant spread.

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Forest Carbon is a Highly Flammable Scam

Thanks to mapping by CarbonPlan, we are able to see that this round of fires has burned tens of thousands of acres which had been placed into forest carbon offset projects. This shell game allows timber companies to cook their books to show their ‘adapted management’ of forests will allow them to grow and sequester more carbon in their forests than would have been there if they had continued to manage the lands under their normal methods. They are then allowed to sell the ‘additionality’ to major carbon polluters (mainly in California) under the California Air Resources Board (CARB)’s ‘Cap and Trade’ program.  Carbon is priced by the ton. Nationwide, CarbonPlan estimates that 22,000 acres of forest carbon offsets have been affected by recent fires.

Here are the highlights in the PNW.

Outlook: Short-Term Uncertainty, High Stakes Around Sisters

Looking ahead for Sisters and the Akawa Butte Fire:

• Short-term positives:
  • The rain may:
    • Knock down active fire along parts of the eastern edge, especially where it has reached last year’s Flat Fire burn scar.
    • Improve overnight humidity recovery, slowing spread in fine fuels.
• Major concerns:
  • Forecasts show drier air returning quickly, with West winds and afternoon humidity dropping back into the 20–30% range
  • Leaving potential for renewed, fast-moving runs as soon as fuels dry out.
  • Even if the fire is effectively “boxed in” along a portion of its edge by the Flat Fire scar, large, uncontained flanks remain, including the critical corridor toward Sisters.

With evacuations already in effect near Sisters and Camp Sherman, extensive fuels between the current fire area and town, and a landscape primed by drought and heavy fuels, fire managers are racing against time and weather to lock in any advantage the brief storm may have provided.

Other Fires

Biscar Fire (Nevada/CA Border, Lassen County)

• The Biscar Fire out in Lassen County is now approximately 70,000 acres.
• Currently showing limited intense heat except on some flanks and in Smoke Creek.
• It has been a lower priority for suppression resources because it’s burning in sparsely populated country.

  

Rock Fire (Inyo County, California)

• South of Bishop, east of the Sierra Nevada, the Rock Fire ran hard down low, then burned up into lava fields and high-country forest,
• It has now moved into rocky, high-elevation terrain, likely to smolder and creep for a long time.
• Hotshot crews have been flown into remote spike camps to work the fire’s edges and protect key values, even though much of the remaining spread is into wilderness and rocky basins.