[UPDATE: Des was suspicious of this number and emailed BLM. Turns out it’s a typo. The actual number is 9,276,416 acres burned year-to-date]. 10 October 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – Just last week, the NIFC site computed the year-to-date acres burned for 2015 to be neck-and-neck with the most recent record year, 2006, at slightly above 9 million acres. So it’s very surprising to see this number jump by more than 2 million to 11,245,536 acres year-to-date, which is well above the 2006 record of 9.8 million acres burned for the whole fire season. Year-to-date statistics for U.S. wildfires, 2005 to 8 October 2015. Graphic: NIFC Des isn’t aware of any two-million-acre megafires that flared up in the last week, so maybe it’s just late-arriving data from earlier in the year. It will be interesting to see what numbers are reported in the next update.