For a long time, catastrophic wildfires ignited by electrical equipment felt like a California problem. Utilities in the Midwest, the South, the Mountain West, and the Northeast could look at those headlines and reasonably feel they were watching someone else’s problem. That distance is closing.

Extreme weather driven by a changing climate is introducing wildfire conditions to regions that have little history with them and limited institutional experience managing them. Utilities that have never written a wildfire mitigation plan are now being asked to produce one. Utilities that have never considered a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) program are being told by regulators, investors, and insurers that they need one. And many of them are sitting with a quiet but persistent thought: we do not actually have wildfire risk.

That assumption is worth revisiting. Climate patterns are shifting, and the conditions that drive ignition risk are showing up in places and at times that historical data did not predict.

Why Low-Risk Does Not Mean No-Risk

Wildfire risk exists on a spectrum, and most utilities sit somewhere on it, even if they have never experienced a significant wildfire event. The conditions that drive ignition risk, dry fuels, low humidity, wind, and an asset failure at the wrong moment, can come together in regions that have historically seen little fire activity. When they do, a utility with no operational experience and no mitigation plan in place is starting from zero in a situation that moves fast.

The regulatory and financial community has already reached this conclusion. Credit rating agencies, insurers, and state regulators are not waiting for utilities to experience a wildfire before expecting them to demonstrate that they understand and are managing their exposure. For utilities that have not yet built that capability, the pressure is coming regardless of whether they have had an incident.

The question is not whether to take wildfire risk seriously. It is how to build the knowledge and tools to manage it without years of operational experience to draw from.

Taking the Guesswork Out

Technosylva Vice President for Weather and Risk Solutions Steve Vanderburg explored this challenge in a recent Utility Dive piece, drawing on years of experience in emergency operations centers during high-stakes fire weather events. The scenario he describes is one many utility engineers and risk managers will recognize: a historic red flag warning covering your entire service territory, leadership looking to you for answers about which circuits are at risk, and no meteorologist on staff to help interpret what the data means for your specific system.

The challenge for utilities new to wildfire risk management is that the decisions involved are genuinely complex. Understanding how weather conditions translate into ignition risk at specific assets, how a fire starting from one of those assets would behave given local fuels and terrain, and how to weigh the disruption of a PSPS against the risk of not acting requires a level of fire weather expertise that most utility operations teams have not needed before.

One thing Steve’s piece makes clear is that context matters as much as the data itself. A 40 mph wind event does not carry the same risk everywhere. In parts of Wyoming, that is an ordinary Tuesday. In a region where vegetation is not conditioned to strong winds and assets have not been evaluated against those conditions, the same gust creates a very different exposure. Generic weather warnings do not make that distinction. Utility-specific risk modeling does.

The tools and data that support these decisions are accessible to utilities of any size. Weather forecast data integrated with fire behavior modeling can give an operations team a clear, current view of where ignition risk is elevated in their territory, days in advance, without requiring in-house meteorologists to interpret it. That shift, from relying on general weather warnings to having a utility-specific risk picture, is what takes the guesswork out of wildfire decision-making.

Building the Foundation

For utilities that are earlier in this process, the priority is establishing the fundamentals. That means developing a basic understanding of local fire weather patterns and the conditions that drive elevated ignition risk in your specific geography. It means identifying the assets and circuits most exposed to those conditions. And it means building operational protocols, including notification processes, de-energization decision frameworks, and communication plans, before they are needed rather than during a crisis.

The investment does not have to happen all at once. Many utilities start by getting the right data in place and building operational protocols around it, adding capability over time as their program matures. The key is starting before the pressure becomes acute, because the utilities that wait until regulators, insurers, or a close call forces the issue are the ones with the least time to do it well.

The Bottom Line

Wildfire risk is no longer confined to the regions that have historically carried it. Every utility operating in conditions where dry fuels, wind, and an asset failure could combine to start a fire has reason to understand that risk and manage it proactively.

The tools to do that are available. The regulatory and financial expectations are already here. Read Steve’s full piece in Utility Dive for a closer look at what it takes to build that capability and what becomes possible when the guesswork is removed from the decision.