Utah red-flag winds ground aircraft as Cottonwood rages

A rare National Weather Service red flag warning for “particularly dangerous situation” conditions in parts of Utah is forcing firefighting changes for the Cottonwood Fire. Officials say single-digit humidities, 45-mile-per-hour gusts, and critically low fuel

Sunset settled over the Cottonwood Fire near Marysvale, Utah, on Friday, June 26, 2026—while firefighters and residents in the Great Basin and Southwest braced for another round of brutal weather.

For the first time in the National Weather Service’s Salt Lake City office history. the agency issued a rare red flag warning for a “particularly dangerous situation” in parts of Utah on Friday. The forecast calls for a volatile mix of high winds, high temperatures, and low humidities through the weekend.

Critical fire weather is expected to persist into Sunday, undercutting containment efforts for the largest wildfire currently burning in the U.S. The Cottonwood Fire is burning in a sparsely populated part of southern Utah, and it remains completely uncontained.

Alyssa Mason, a spokesperson assigned to the fire, described what makes this stretch of conditions so hard to manage. “Our biggest challenge right now is that we have single digit humidities and the wind gusts are around 45 miles per hour. ” she said. “That’s on top of fuel moistures between 2 and 8 percent.”.

Utah’s drought has left forests and brush primed to ignite. Surveyors documented their lowest snow levels on record in parts of the Rocky Mountains this winter. Utah’s snowpack—crucial because it provides much of the state’s water as it melts—peaked three weeks earlier than normal and was also the lowest on record. according to the state’s division of water resources. Similar widespread drought conditions are affecting much of Utah, Nevada, Colorado, and other states in the Intermountain West.

On Friday afternoon, the combination of those dry fuels and high winds pushed the incident management team to take drastic steps. Helicopters and other firefighting aircraft were grounded due to the weather, and Mason said the incident managers temporarily pulled “guys off the line.”

The firefight may get a brief opening next week. The National Weather Service said cooler temperatures and higher humidities could bring a small reprieve. But the drought remains, and the pressure on firefighting capacity is mounting because the region is dealing with multiple large fires.

With that strain building at home, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox issued an emergency order last week temporarily restricting firework displays through the Fourth of July holiday. At a press conference announcing the restrictions. he said. “When people who’ve dedicated their lives to protecting Utah tell us this year is different. we desperately need to listen.”.

The policy reflects a broader reality facing U.S. wildfire response. The U.S. Forest Service says the vast majority of wildfires in the United States are started by humans every year. The same problem is becoming more severe: wildfires that begin still have a bigger and more destructive reach as climate change warms the global climate.

A study published earlier this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that forest fires now burn ten times more acreage annually than in 1985.

Fire itself isn’t automatically the enemy. Wildfires are a natural phenomenon, and many U.S. forests and ecosystems depend on low to moderate severity burns to clear undergrowth and help new trees take hold. But a century of aggressive wildfire suppression has left many forests overgrown. When rising temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns—hallmarks of a warming world—meet that legacy. severe fires have become more common than beneficial ones. the new study found.

Mitchell Hung. an earth-systems researcher who led the study as a graduate student at UCLA. put the stakes in economic terms. “The loss of these forests isn’t just, ‘I can’t take a pretty picture,’” he said in a statement. “There are profound socioeconomic impacts. Real dollars are being lost each year due to high severity forest fire.”.

For the Cottonwood Fire, the immediate picture is stark: through Friday and into the weekend, extreme conditions and grounded aircraft are colliding with critically dry fuels, leaving the fire completely uncontained as Utah waits for relief that may come only in small, temporary windows.

Utah wildfires Cottonwood Fire red flag warning National Weather Service Salt Lake City fire weather drought Spencer Cox fuel moisture aviation grounded Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences