Our fire seasons are spring and fall, not summer
Wildfire risk in western North Carolina doesn’t follow the summer calendar most people picture. We have two fire seasons, and both of them fall outside the hottest months. The North Carolina Department of Public Safety puts the spring season between mid-March and mid-April, and the fall season starting in late September or early October and running into early December. The North Carolina Forest Service and the U.S. Forest Service describe October through early December as the peak of that fall stretch.
The Department describes the drivers a little differently for each season. In spring it’s warming temperatures, longer days, and scattered storms that leave some areas dry while soaking others. In fall it’s warm weather holding on, a heavy new fuel load of fallen leaves on the ground, and dry, windy days on top of it. A wet spring doesn’t rule out a bad April, either. Fire danger here can climb in a matter of days.
A fire that came close
The Silver Mine Fire started April 21, 2016 in Pisgah National Forest near Hot Springs and wasn’t fully contained until May 4. It burned 5,964 acres over those two weeks, and investigators determined it was human caused. That fire is the clearest local answer to anyone who thinks of wildfire as a western problem or a summer one. It happened here, in April, in the woods most of us can see from our own porches.
Nearly all of these fires start with a person
The North Carolina Forest Service reports that close to 99 percent of the state’s wildfires are human caused, and careless outdoor burning is the leading cause. That is discouraging and encouraging at the same time, because it means most of them are preventable by people making a different decision.
If you burn yard debris, the law here is specific. Under North Carolina General Statute 106-943(b), it is unlawful to start a fire in or within 500 feet of protected woodland between midnight and 4 p.m. without a permit. The Virginia Department of Forestry, which enforces the same 4 p.m. rule next door, explains the reasoning: after 4 p.m. winds usually calm and relative humidity rises, both of which make a debris fire less likely to escape. Permits are free, and the North Carolina Forest Service issues them online in a few minutes. Get one before you strike a match, and never burn on a dry, windy day even if you have the permit in hand.
Check the fire danger before you burn
One layer past the basics, and it takes a minute. The North Carolina Forest Service publishes a fire danger assessment with weekly and seasonal outlooks, and a daily wildfire situation report showing fires and acres burned by district. Both are public, and both take about a minute to read. Checking them before a burn day is the outdoor-burning equivalent of checking the river gauge before heavy rain: it turns a guess into a decision.
If you back up to national forest land, the USDA Forest Service also posts alerts and closures for the National Forests in North Carolina, including the Appalachian Ranger District that covers Madison County. Fire restrictions and campfire bans show up there first.
When something is already burning
For an active incident, InciWeb is the interagency site where federal fire information gets posted, including size, containment, and closures. For smoke, the EPA and U.S. Forest Service run the AirNow Fire and Smoke Map, which shows fine particle pollution near you in close to real time. Smoke from a fire two counties over can settle into this valley and sit here, and the CDC recommends an N95 or P100 respirator if you have to be outside when you can see or smell smoke. A dust mask or a bandana won’t do it.
What wildfire risk in western North Carolina means for your property
North Carolina leads the country in wildland urban interface acreage, roughly 13.4 million acres, close to 40 percent of the state, according to the North Carolina Forest Service. Hot Springs sits squarely in that category. Homes here are tucked against forest, up hollows, and on slopes with one way in.
The good news is that the work that protects a house from wildfire is mostly ordinary yard work done in the right order. Another post in this series walks through the five feet closest to your walls, which is where that work starts. In the meantime, the highest-value hour you can spend this week: clear dead leaves and pine needles off your roof, out of your gutters, and off your deck. Embers land in that debris first. Defensible space is the next post, and it starts five feet from your wall.
Resources mentioned in this post
- How to be ready for fire season in North Carolina, N.C. Department of Public Safety: https://www.ncdps.gov/blog/2025/11/12/how-be-ready-fire-season-north-carolina
- Fall wildfire season underway, USDA Forest Service and North Carolina Forest Service: https://www.fs.usda.gov/r08/northcarolina/newsroom/releases/fall-wildfire-season-underway-north-carolina-forest-service
- Open burning permits in North Carolina, North Carolina Forest Service: https://www.ncagr.gov/divisions/nc-forest-service/open-burning-permits
- Online burning permit application, North Carolina Forest Service: https://apps.ncagr.gov/burnpermits/
- Fire danger assessment, North Carolina Forest Service: https://www.ncagr.gov/divisions/nc-forest-service/fire-control-and-prevention/fire-danger
- Daily wildfire situation report, North Carolina Forest Service: https://www.ncagr.gov/divisions/nc-forest-service/fire-control-and-prevention/sit-report
- Resist Wildfire North Carolina, North Carolina Forest Service: https://www.ncagr.gov/divisions/nc-forest-service/resist-wildfire-north-carolina
- Alerts and closures, National Forests in North Carolina, USDA Forest Service: https://www.fs.usda.gov/r08/northcarolina/alerts
- Interagency wildfire information, InciWeb: https://inciweb.wildfire.gov/
- Fire and Smoke Map, AirNow, U.S. EPA and USDA Forest Service: https://fire.airnow.gov/
- How to protect workers and the public from wildfire smoke, CDC and NIOSH: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/bulletin/2025/wildfire-smoke.html
- N.C.G.S. 106-943, open fires near woodlands, North Carolina General Assembly: https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySection/Chapter_106/GS_106-943.html