Critical fire weather complicates firefighting efforts in massive Utah wildfire

The sun sets over the Cottonwood Fire near Marysvale, Utah, on Friday, June 26, 2026. Ty ONeil/AP hide caption toggle caption Ty ONeil/AP Firefighters and residents in the Great Basin and Southwest are bracing for extreme wildfire conditions through the weekend. The National Weather Service in Salt Lake City issued a rare "particularly dangerous situation" red flag warning in parts of Utah, Friday, for the first time in the office's history, due to a volatile combination of high winds, temperatures and low humidities. Critical fire weather conditions are expected to persist into Sunday , complicating efforts to contain the largest wildfire currently burning in the U.S., the Cottonwood Fire , which is burning in a sparsely populated part of southern Utah. "Our biggest challenge right now is that we have single digit humidities and the wind gusts are around 45 miles per hour," said Alyssa Mason, a spokesperson assigned to the fire. "That's on top of fuel moistures between 2 and 8 percent." Much of Utah, Nevada, Colorado and other states in the Intermountain West are experiencing widespread drought conditions after an abnormally dry winter. Surveyors documented their lowest snow levels on record in parts of the Rocky Mountains this winter. Utah's snowpack, which provides the state with much of its water as it melts, peaked three weeks earlier than normal and was also the lowest on record, according to the state's division of water resources. …