Yellowstone fires of 1988
The Yellowstone fires of 1988 collectively formed the largest wildfire in the recorded history of Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Starting as many smaller individual fires, the flames quickly spread out of control due to drought conditions and increasing winds, combining into several large conflagrations which burned for several months. The fires almost destroyed two major visitor destinations and, on September 8, 1988, the entire park was closed to all non-emergency personnel for the first time in its history. Only the arrival of cool and moist weather in the late autumn brought the fires to an end. A total of 793,880 acres (3,213 km2), or 36 percent of the park, burned at varying levels of severity.
Fires approach the Old Faithful Complex on September 7, 1988
1953: a firefighter hikes to a distant fire
Typical Yellowstone lodgepole pine forest in the year 1965
Firefighting at Norris on August 20, 1988, a day that was later dubbed "Black Saturday" due to the huge amount of land that was burned as well as the dense smoke that turned daytime to night in some places
A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a bushfire, desert fire, grass fire, hill fire, peat fire, prairie fire, vegetation fire, or veld fire. Some natural forest ecosystems depend on wildfire. Wildfires are distinct from beneficial human usage of wildland fire, called controlled or prescribed burning, although controlled burns can turn into wildfires. Modern forest management often engages in prescribed burns to mitigate risk and promote natural forest cycles.
Wildfire burning in the Kaibab National Forest, Arizona, United States, in 2020. The Mangum Fire burned more than 70,000 acres (280 km2) of forest.
Wildfire near Yosemite National Park, United States, in 2013. The Rim Fire burned more than 250,000 acres (1,000 km2) of forest.
Global fires during the year 2008 for the months of August (top image) and February (bottom image), as detected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite.
Lightning-sparked wildfires are frequent occurrences during the dry summer season in Nevada.