As the fire season for 2026 has made its way to southern Idaho ahead of schedule, one of the most iconic specters of fire devastation has increasingly been invoked – the 1988 Yellowstone fires that rewrote the landscape and made the potential for quick and destructive fire events into a clear reality for millions.  This is especially true for those who were around in 1988, of course.  I was a teenager at the time, and we had planned to visit Yellowstone that year.  Instead, we watched the constant stream of apocalyptic images as they filled the screen.  

While nothing as devastating has happened since that time in southeast Idaho, many of the conditions in play are back again.

Some of those factors from 1988 included an unusually dry winter, which left much of the region with reduced snowpack. Spring was relatively wet, causing abundant grass and vegetation growth.  Then summer turned exceptionally hot and dry, with very little rainfall. 

Frequent dry thunderstorms produced lightning ignitions while strong winds rapidly spread fires. 

The result was one of the most significant wildfire seasons in modern U.S. history. Around Yellowstone alone, roughly 1.2 million acres burned across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, including about 794,000 acres inside the park itself (about 36% of the park according to official reporting ). Firefighters largely concluded that only the September rain and snow finally stopped the fires. 

In our neck of the woods 

Southern Idaho did not experience a single iconic fire equivalent to Yellowstone, but it was heavily affected by the same drought and fire weather.

The most immediate effect was smoke.  Communities across southern Idaho—including areas around Boise, Twin Falls, and much of Teton, Caribou, Bannock, Bonneville, Franklin, Bear Lake, and Oneida counties (and more!)—experienced periods of smoky skies from fires burning in Idaho, Yellowstone, Wyoming, and Montana. I remember reddish suns and hazy conditions that lasted for days or weeks, as well as that heavy, oily smell that characterizes forest fires.

The drought affected southern Idaho’s agricultural economy as much as the fires themselves. Rangelands dried early.  Livestock producers faced reduced forage availability. 

Irrigation became increasingly important because of low natural moisture.  Dry grasses created elevated wildfire risk across sagebrush and desert landscapes.  The Snake River Plain remained productive because of irrigation, but dryland farming and grazing operations felt significant stress.

In addition to the marquee Yellowstone fire, Idaho had numerous other significant fires during 1988, though they received less national attention than Yellowstone. Federal and state firefighting resources were stretched throughout the region as crews, aircraft, and equipment were moved among fires in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. The Yellowstone campaign became the largest firefighting effort in U.S. history up to that time. 

For many Idahoans, the defining memory is not necessarily flames on the horizon but a summer-long drought, persistent smoke and haze, constant wildfire news coverage, and the sense that Yellowstone—one of America’s most famous landscapes—might burn completely. 

At the time, many people – including myself and my siblings - thought the fires represented an environmental disaster of end of the world proportions. Later research showed that much of Yellowstone recovered naturally and that fire was an important ecological process in those forests.  I remember it being hard to reconcile the idea that “fires are good for forests!” with the charred, smoke-filled wasteland dotted with black skeletal trees barely hanging on.  Nowadays, the main signs of the event are literally signs that have been put up commemorating the new tree planting after the fire, or at various visitor’s centers in the park. 

The 1988 season also changed wildfire management across the West. It led agencies to reexamine policies regarding naturally ignited fires, firefighter deployment, public communication, and ecosystem management. It also became one of the first wildfire events that many Americans followed day-by-day on national television, making it a landmark moment in public awareness of wildfire risk. 

Even though I’m not falling apart just yet, I do recognize that 1988 was essentially pre-history for many adults today, to say nothing of kids.  The fires in Hawaii and California in recent years have invoked some of the same emotions and anxieties that “Black Saturday” did for me at the time, riding in the back of the Dodge K Car wagon without a seatbelt an staring out at the decimated landscape the year after the fire.  Hopefully, the years that have marched onward since then have prepared everyone enough that this year’s fire season, which will undoubtedly be busy and destructive, will at least not end up with a scary nickname!