Looking Back on New Jersey's 2024 Wildfire Season

 I follow the NJ Forest Association, they are a good group that advocates for all forests in New Jersey, see their about us page for more information on their mission, organization and objectives. One of the things they do is to do a monthly webinar on backyard forestry with seminars on a variety of issues affecting people who live in or near forests, perhaps owning some forest lands. Last January their webinar focused on forest fire risk and prevention, and sharing about the 2024 wildfire season in New Jersey with representatives from the NJ Forest Fire Service (NJFFS). Their 90 minute January webinar is on YouTube and may be found here. They start by discussing some history of the NJFFS and their organization. For those who are interested, the information on New Jersey's 2024 wildfire season that I am referring to in this article starts at about 22 minutes into the video and continues for about 25 minutes (57 minutes), if you watch the video you will get a lot more information. I am barely skimming the surface on the New Jersey's 2024 wildfire season.

Thanks to the NJ Forest Association's January 2025 webinar on forest fires in New Jersey, I had access to more detailed information on the 2024 wildfire season then I usually do. I thank you at the NJ Forest Association for presenting the January 2025 webinar and to the NJ Forest Fire Service presenters and staff who put the information in this video together. 

Using some of the information in the NJ Forestry Associations January webinar on forest fires in New Jersey I am to provide some new and updated information to the post that I made on November 11th, Asides from adding information for one fire and adding some clarification, I am not revising the acreage burned numbers, these numbers can be considered preliminary and in a few cases the NJFFS revised acreage burned later on with better mapping and the like. Note that I only have information on major fires, fires that burned at least 100 acres. 

Before moving onto some more detailed information on New Jersey's 2024 wildfire season, I want to briefly mention the organization of the NJFFS. As you can see from the map, there are three divisions, division A in northern NJ, division B in central NJ and Division C in southern NJ. See the NJFFS Organization page for a description of the management of these divisions. 

Obtained on February 6, 2024 from https://www.nj.gov/dep/parksandforests/fire/docs/adminboundaries.pdf

In 2024 there were 1,440 wildfires that burned 12,445 acres. If you are wondering how the 2024 wildfire season in New Jersey compares with prior NJ wildfire seasons, the NJFFS provided information on the number of NJ wildfires from 2013 to 2024. You will see that the 2024 wildfire season has the most wildfires.

• 2013: 990
• 2014: 924
• 2015: 1051
• 2016: 1053
• 2017: 636
• 2018: 629
• 2019: 737
• 2020: 1,033
• 2021: 946
• 2022: 1,175
• 2023: 1,193
• 2024: 1,440

The material presented by the NJFFS in the January webinar allowed me to break down the 2024 total acreage burned of 14,440 acres down into divisions:

• Division A: 544 wildfires burned 3,416 acres
• Division B: 410 wildfires burned 7,787 acres
• Division C: 486 wildfires burned 1,221 acres

I was interested in the information that the NJFFS provided on major fires (100 acres or more) in 2024. Please note that some of the numbers differ from what I presented in my  November 11th post on the 2024 fall wildfire season in New Jersey. This is because the exact number of acres burned can change after the fire is contained  because better mapping and other updates on the fire size were available.

• County Line Fire was started on April 24, burning 510 acres.
• Tea Time Hill Fire was started on July 4, burning 4.000 acres 
• Whip-poor-will Fire started on July 26, burned 1,167 acres
• Fishers Pit Fire started on September 9, burned 189 acres
• Industrial Parkway Fire started on October 26, burned 196 acres
• Halloween Fire started on October 31, burned 137 acres
• Craigmeur Lookout Fire started on October 31, burned 211 acres
• Shotgun Fire started on November 6, burned 350 acres
• Bethany Run Fire started on November 7, burned 360 acres
• Pheasant Run Fire started on November 7, burned 133 acres
• Cannonball 3 Fire started on November 8, burned 182 acres
• Jennings Creek Fire (NJ and NY) started on November 8, burned 2,283 acres in NJ

Thanks to this webinar, I can also provide NJFFS wildfire responses in 2024 by month:

• January: 34
• February: 89
• March: 229
• April: 228
• May: 89
• June: 208
• July: 110
• August: 86
• September: 168
• October: 507
• November: 392
• December: 84