Year-to-date wildfire statistics show that total acres burned in Wyoming is up a bit in 2003, compared to the ferocious fire season of 2002, while nationally, burned acres are dramatically down.

The National Interagency Coordination Center in Boise, Idaho, has operational estimates that this season, Wyoming has had 499 large fires that have burned 82,727 acres. The Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center in Lakewood, Co., estimates Wyoming's wildfire burn at 84,705 acres at a cost of almost $30 million. The most expensive fire in Wyoming this season was the East Complex in Yellowstone National Park, at $7 million.

A year ago last August, Wyoming had seen 286 fires that had burned a total of 57,227 acres.

A look at the larger fires in the past couple of years shows Wyoming had 63,334 burned acres for all of 2001 and 345,768 acres in 2000.

Wyoming Bureau of Land Management reported that it had 30,550 acres burn this season on BLM lands, compared to 12,850 acres last year. Rock Springs Field Office handled 18,000 acres, followed by Casper with 6,200 acres, Rawlins with 6,000 acres and Worland with 350 acres.

"There were fewer lightning storms this season over Wyoming," said Rose Davis, Forest Service public information officer. "With fewer lightning strikes there were fewer ignition sources and therefore fewer fires."

That was true for Colorado, which had many more large fires than Wyoming (1,828) but only 17,945 acres burned. The year before, the giant Hayman fire burned 137,760 acres, including 133 homes.

While lightning strikes largely spared Wyoming and Colorado, Davis said, Montana was repeatedly zapped - causing 2,202 large fires and 757,988 acres burned.

Overall, the nation's wildfire fighters battled 48,564 large fires which burned 3.1 million acres this fire season - less than half of last year's wild season that saw 88,458 large fires and 6.9 million acres burned. A large fire is defined as 100 acres of forest or 300 acres of grassland.

While the wildfire season is definitely winding down, a comprehensive, end-of-season wildfire report is months away, Davis said. Different land management agencies report their fires at different times of the year from different data bases, she said, and care must be taken to avoid duplication, when different agencies come together on the same fires.

As of Monday, the National Fire Information Center in Boise reported zero large new fires in the country and only 12 large active fires - none in Wyoming.

"The wildfire potential for Wyoming right now is low," said Rick Ochoa, fire weather program manager for the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). Thanks to recent rain and snow storms, Wyoming's forests have a low fire risk, he said - unless there is a prolonged dry spell and warm winds. Ochoa predicts fewer dry lightning storms as the West moves into fall, plus shorter afternoons - that's fewer ignition sources and fewer hot days that make wood easy to burn.

Tom Wordell of NIFC's predictive services office said the Northern Rockies had more fires than expected - largely thanks to a series of dry thunderstorms that raked Montana this summer.

"We really expected the Rocky Mountains to have an above-average year," Wordell said, "and an above-average year for Wyoming, like the Bighorns and the Wind River country."

Wet thunderstorms came early and often for much of the Wyoming high country, however, and fire risk went down accordingly, he said.