Alaska — 46,000 lightning strikes and many fires

Bill Gabbert
June 23, 2015

(UPDATED at 12:22 p.m. MT, June 24, 2015)

Below is a list of fires in Alaska that are currently reported on InciWeb, sorted by size:

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(Originally published at 9:09 p.m. MT, June 23, 2015)

Alaska Lightning — From Alaska Climate Info: This map shows the number of lightnings strikes in Alaska and western Canada since Saturday. The grand total was over 46,000 strikes. An average season has about 110,000 strikes. On Sunday, the Alaska Division of Forestry said that the 14,000+ lightning strikes was an all-time record (1986-present). On Monday an equal amount of strikes were recorded.
Note: Data can be found here:

A Facebook page called Alaska Climate Info has some amazing, even shocking, images of 46,000 lightning strikes in the state between Saturday and Tuesday morning, and a map showing dozens of fires that are larger than 5 acres each.

Alaska Fires, June 23, 2015 — From Alaska Climate Info: Reader Tracy asked if there was a satellite image showing the smoke across Alaska. This image was captured yesterday by the Soumi-NPP (SNPP) satellite. The smoke in Interior Alaska stands out as a milky white. The bright white areas are thunderstorms and other high clouds. Active fires are shown as yellow dots.

In the image below, I believe each tag is a wildfire.

This map from the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center helps put Alaska’s wildland fire situation in perspective. pic.twitter.com/gQx8g2wkNs

— AK Forestry (@AK_Forestry) June 24, 2015