Betula Fire doubles to 35 acres near Central; Colorado hotshots fly in

A wildfire burning through the leftovers of last year's blaze has doubled overnight southeast of Central, and crews are racing to box it in before lightning forecast for this week can spread it further.

The Betula Fire reached an estimated 35 acres Monday and remains completely uncontained, chewing through heavy dead-and-down timber about 21 miles southeast of Central in the Yukon-Tanana Uplands. What's feeding it is its own predecessor: the fire is moving across the remnants of a 2025 burn in the same spot, and all that dead wood left behind is accelerating the spread.

The response has been fast for so remote a fire. Smokejumpers reached the site overnight and began cutting line around the heel and perimeter, water-scooping aircraft worked the head and right flank, and a hotshot crew from Colorado — the Pike Interagency Hotshots — is traveling in to join the fight. The urgency reflects where the fire sits: in a zone designated for full suppression early in the season rather than passive monitoring.

The bigger worry is the weather behind it. Fuels across much of Interior Alaska are very dry, and thunderstorms are forecast again for the western Interior — the kind of lightning that starts new fires and can leave "sleeper" fires smoldering underground for days before flaring up. The Betula Fire is one of several already burning across the region, in black spruce and birch forest that carries fire more readily than any other in the Interior.