May is Wildfire Awareness Month: Looking into the Future

Every May, as Wildfire Awareness Month begins, public agencies and communities alike turn to the National Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook for early warning signs. This valuable 4-month snapshot — published by Predictive Services, part of the National Interagency Fire Council — helps guide seasonal readiness and informs fire managers about which regions may face elevated wildfire activity.

But as the climate changes, so must our planning horizons.

In April 2025, national fire activity momentarily dipped to low levels, and the preparedness level dropped to one on a scale of five. But that reprieve was short-lived. In the last 10 days of April, activity surged again across the Southern, Eastern, and Southwest areas.

Now, as of early May, both total acres burned and the number of fires are well above the 10-year average — 108% and 147%, respectively.

These numbers tell us one thing: the pace and unpredictability of fire behavior are accelerating. A four-month glance is no longer enough.

Short-Term Snapshots Miss Long-Term Consequences

The current 4-month outlook offers valuable insights for immediate operational decisions — staffing, equipment staging, public awareness. But utilities, insurers, emergency managers, and municipal finance officers are also tasked with longer-term commitments: grid upgrades, bond issuance, resource allocation, and community evacuation planning.

Without a 12-month forward look, these stakeholders are left reactive rather than strategic. Infrastructure investments require year-ahead planning. Budgets are set months in advance. And reinsurance contracts often need early data to price climate exposure properly.

What’s Needed: A Full-Year Fire Risk Forecast

Wildfire season is no longer confined to summer. In recent years, major fires have ignited in January, April, and even December. This shift requires a probabilistic, year-round understanding of risk, not just during peak season.

A 12-month forecast would:

• Help utilities prioritize vegetation management where risks will be highest six to nine months from now
• Inform municipal bond issuers about the potential fiscal exposure before a downgrade hits
• Assist insurers in pricing wildfire risk with greater temporal granularity
• Enable emergency services to stage equipment and plan workforce needs far in advance

Athena’s Voice of the Acre Speaks the Extend View

At Athena Intelligence, we’ve seen firsthand the value of extending the outlook. By combining weather forecasts, landscape conditions, ignition probability, and value-at-risk into a probabilistic, 12-month forward model, we help our partners make decisions today that protect lives, infrastructure, and capital tomorrow.

Agencies like Predictive Services do a tremendous job at offering a foundational snapshot. But the future of wildfire planning must stretch beyond quarterly windows. In an era where fires can go from dormant to devastating in a week, looking just four months ahead is a luxury we can no longer afford.

Let’s celebrate Wildfire Awareness Month by thinking a year ahead.

Start a conversation with Athena before the next disaster puts your budget, your infrastructure, and your public trust on the line. We can show you where catastrophic wildfire is possible and likely in the next 12 months.

If you, the reader, lives in a community focused on resiliency and energy security, you probably have a municipal or coop utility. Please reach out to your local leaders and suggest they check out our writing for utility leadership on Energy Central.

In addition to towns and counties, a new product for Homeowners’ Associations (HOAs) will be rolling out shortly.

Athena Intelligence is a data vendor with a geospatial, conditional, profiling tool that pulls together vast amounts of disaggregated wildfire and environmental data to generate spatial intelligence, resulting in a digital fingerprint of wildfire risk.

Our primary clients are electric utilities, especially municipal utilities, community owned cooperative electrical companies and community aggregators. Athena’s geospatial intelligence incorporated into multiple products that can be accessed through an online portal.

Athena’s data is currently used in wildfire mitigation plans (WMP) and public safety power shutoffs (PSPS), Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP), Risk Spend Efficiency reporting to PUCs and other stakeholders.

You can reach out to me at Elizabeth@AthenaIntel.io and follow us on LinkedIn.