North Carolina Fire Danger

NC Forest Service fire safety outdoors carries the burning permit requirement near woodland and the counties under a burning ban, and that is the current answer. Burn bans in North Carolina are declared and lifted by county authorities and by North Carolina Forest Service, sometimes inside a day, so the status is theirs to publish. This page carries today's National Weather Service fire weather for North Carolina, the federal record of what fire looks like here, and the link to that page.

At NC Forest Service fire safety outdoors, published by North Carolina Forest Service. Link verified 2026-09-02. Even that page may not be the last word: in most states a county, a city or a fire district can be stricter than the state, and on federal land the managing unit issues its own order. If you are within a few miles of a national forest, a park or BLM ground, that unit has a separate order and it is not on the state page.

A Red Flag Warning is a National Weather Service product, not a legal order. NWS describes it this way: "NWS issues a Red Flag Warning, in conjunction with land management agencies, to alert land managers to an ongoing or imminent critical fire weather pattern. NWS issues a Red Flag Warning when fire conditions are ongoing or expected to occur shortly." It is issued for a fire weather zone, and NWS divides North Carolina into 117 of them, so one warning usually covers part of the state rather than all of it. Whether burning is prohibited is a separate question decided by North Carolina Forest Service and by your county, though many states suspend permits automatically when a warning is out. NC Forest Service fire safety outdoors is where that is published.

In NICC's 2025 record for North Carolina, 6,838 of 6,872 reported fires were human caused and 34 were lightning. The acre split is the more interesting one: 38,142 acres from human starts and 3,869 from lightning. That makes this one of 30 states where lightning is effectively absent from both columns, which means essentially every fire here was preventable by somebody. Those are NICC's numbers, reported through the interagency Situation Report.

Not completely. NICC's table is fed by the interagency Situation Report, which NICC labels "Figures are from the SIT/209 Application". A fire that a local department handles and never reports through that stream is not in the count. North Carolina does have a state agency reporting row, which is why its numbers look fuller than those of the five states that have none, but a small grass fire put out by a volunteer department in an afternoon is usually invisible here.

As of the US Drought Monitor map for 2026-08-25, 83.1 percent of North Carolina was in D0 abnormally dry conditions or worse, 62.3 percent in D1 moderate drought or worse and 19 percent in D2 severe drought or worse, with a Drought Severity and Coverage Index of 170. Those are the Drought Monitor's categories and its numbers, published weekly, not a fire rating. Drought sets how much fuel is available to burn; the weather on the day sets whether it does.

North Carolina Forest Service publishes the state's own answer, and it is usually expressed as a permit season or a restricted burning period rather than as a season in the weather sense. NC Forest Service fire safety outdoors carries the burning permit requirement near woodland and the counties under a burning ban. Nationally the picture is that there is no off season anywhere: NIFC's National Preparedness Level runs on a 1 to 5 scale year round and the National Interagency Coordination Center publishes a significant wildland fire potential outlook every month for the next four months. The month you are least expecting fire is the month most people get caught.

No. The rating that exists is the National Fire Danger Rating System, which NWS describes as "A uniform fire danger rating system used in the United States that focuses on the environmental factors that impact the moisture content of fuels. Fire danger is rated daily over large administrative areas, such as national forests." North Carolina Forest Service publishes a daily rating built on it, NWS issues Red Flag Warnings and Fire Weather Watches against fire weather zones, NIFC publishes a national preparedness level, and the Drought Monitor publishes drought categories. Those four are the numbers on this page, and a fifth would only add confusion on a subject where a wrong number burns houses down.

It runs on its own orders. A national forest, a national park, a BLM district and a wildlife refuge each issue their own fire restrictions, and those orders are not on the state page and often differ from it. In practice that means a state page can describe a fairly relaxed picture while a specific ranger district a few miles away is under a stage 2 restriction that prohibits all open flame. If your ground touches federal land, check the managing unit as well as North Carolina Forest Service.