Massive wildfire in New Jersey still burning. Images here.

BREAKING: Eyewitness video from Lacey Township, New Jersey shows massive 1,200-acre Jones Road Wildfire burning; evacuations and road closures underway.

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— AZ Intel (@azintel.bsky.social) April 22, 2025 at 7:15 PM

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Dramatic footage and info of the wildfire in New Jersey.

Wildfire in New Jersey still burning

As of this morning (April 23, 2025), the massive wildfire that began burning in Ocean County, New Jersey, yesterday has burned thousands of acres, forced thousands of evacuations and closed several roads, according to NBCPhiladelphia. They report:

• The fire began shortly before 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 22, at the Greenwood Forest Wildlife Management Area in Barnegat Township, Ocean County.
• The fire spread to Lacey Township and Ocean Township, sending massive plumes of white smoke into the air.
• As of Tuesday, April 22, at 11 p.m., the “Jones Wildfire” burned 8,500 acres [3,400 hectares], threatened 1,320 structures, forced 3,000 evacuations in Ocean and Lacey townships, caused thousands of power outages, and shut down multiple roadways, including a stretch of the Garden State Parkway, leading to a traffic nightmare.
• Shelters for the evacuees were created at Southern Regional High School on 105 Cedar Bridge Road in Manahawkin, New Jersey, and Manchester Township High School at 101 Hawks Way in Manchester, New Jersey.
• Multiple resources were deployed to fight the fire, including local, county and state fire services. No injuries have been reported. As of late Tuesday night, the fire was 10% contained. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

Follow live updates from NBCPhiladelphia

A wildfire ignites and rapidly grows in size in New Jersey.

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— cira-csu.bsky.social (@cira-csu.bsky.social) April 22, 2025 at 5:15 PM

Evacuation orders were issued in New Jersey, and traffic on the major Garden State Parkway was being diverted, due to a wildfire that began Tuesday and grew to more than 3,200 acres, officials say.

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— NBC News (@nbcnews.com) April 22, 2025 at 9:45 PM

Where and why?

Is the U.S. Northeast entering a wildfire era?

The New York Times reported on April 22, 2025, that the area in New Jersey where the fire began – called the Pine Barrens, or Pinelands – is the largest forested area on the Eastern Seaboard between Maine and the Florida Everglades, at 1.1 million acres. The Times said it is:

… a frequent setting for wildfires.

As in much of the rest of the country, last year was particularly bad for wildfires in New Jersey. From early October through Nov. 20, the forest fire service responded to more than 10 times the number of fires as it had in the same period in 2023. “We have never experienced conditions like this,” Bill Donnelly, chief of the fire service, said then.

If you've heard me talk about Western U.S. wildfire, you've probably heard me mention that while *baseline* fire risk is lower in the (moister) East, the *conditional* risk can still be extremely high when conditions align (including, as here, in and downwind of pine barrens in New Jersey today).

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— Daniel Swain (@weatherwest.bsky.social) April 22, 2025 at 10:11 PM

Bottom line: The massive wildfire in New Jersey – which began burning in Ocean County yesterday – has burned thousands of acres, forced evacuations and closed roads.