- April 2, 2026
Drought conditions in Florida have helped spur 1,500 wildfires in the first three months of the year, Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson said.
That puts the state on track to surpass the 3,100 fires in all of 2025, and the 2,500 blazes in 2024. The conflagrations have been mostly contained but have also burned down more than a dozen homes, and threatened businesses throughout the state.
“The busiest part of the fire season is April, May and June, and guess what’s right in front of us,” Simpson told the News Service of Florida.
All of Florida is experiencing drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, which means increased threats of wildfires and declining groundwater.
Simpson’s Department of Agriculture oversees the Florida Forestry Service (FFS). Along with other agencies, they are watching water levels, wind speeds and high temperatures closely, monitoring what they say is the worst drought the state has seen in over a decade.
In North Florida and the Panhandle, the worst drought conditions in the state span about 14 counties. This area, from Calhoun County to Union County, covers almost 10% of Florida.
But all of Florida is feeling the burn, according to the FFS wildfire map. As of Wednesday, the first day of fire season, the map showed 24 active fires from Pensacola to West Palm Beach.
In March, a 500-acre wildfire in Calhoun County burned down 16 homes. A few days later, a wildfire in Hernando Beach spread to 150 acres, but never sparked over the canal, sparing restaurants and businesses near Weeki Wachee Preserve.
The forestry service recently hired more firefighters for a total of 1,200 employees, and upgraded its firefighting fleet, purchasing 46 drones, eight helicopters and 73 new bulldozers, Simpson said.
Bulldozers are used to clear an area around fires, also called fire breaks, to stop the spread of a forest fire.
“We had one state-owned helicopter, and we had a handful of helicopters that were old Hueys from the Vietnam era that had been surplus from the federal government. Needless to say, they were not reliable at all,” Simpson said.
The state has contained the rapidly increasing number of fires so far, and water management districts have implemented preventative water restrictions to mitigate the risk of fires starting in the first place.
South Florida has fared better than North Florida this spring. Water shortage warnings for Miami-Dade and Monroe counties were rescinded at the end of March after the area got up to 6 inches of rain and the Biscayne aquifer rose to a safer level.
The aquifer supplies most of the drinking water for both counties.
The Northwest Florida Water Management District is also keeping its water restrictions voluntary, but the Suwannee River Water Management District recently increased cuts to water usage in all or part of the 15 counties it oversees, which includes 13 river basins.
Landscape and irrigation is limited to one day per week, and homeowners’ associations are prohibited from enforcing extra watering for lawns, said Troy Roberts, a spokesperson for the district. There are also pressure washing, street and sidewalk cleaning restrictions.
Most of the rivers are reaching less than 25 percent of their average levels. The district has been recording river levels for more than 100 years, Roberts said, and some rivers have data tracking back to 1906.
This spring, there are dry patches of the Santa Fe River along Interstate 75, and the Alapaha River is being used as a four-wheeler track.
“We continue to monitor our groundwater levels, and if we see that further water shortage measures are necessary, we will present that information to the governing board and they will make that determination,” Roberts said.
