Doyle Rice

USA TODAY

Wildfires across the USA burned an area about the size of Delaware, charring a whopping 1.3 million acres in the first 3 1/2 months of the year, according to data released Friday by the National Interagency Fire Center.

That's more than twice the average for this point of the year, and nearly double the total burned as of just two weeks ago.

The hardest-hit states have been in the southern U.S., fire center spokeswoman Jessica Gardetto said.

One inferno, the Anderson Creek Fire, which singed the Plains starting in March, marked the largest wildfire in the U.S. this year and the biggest in Kansas history. It charred an area twice the size of the five boroughs of New York City.

In Arizona, 294 fires burned in the first quarter of the year, double the same period last year, state fire officials say.

Last year, a record 10,125,149 acres burned across the USA, topping the 10-million-acre mark for the first time. The previous record, set in 2006, was 9,873,745 acres. The 2015 figure was about 4 million more acres than average.

Nine of the 10 worst years for acres burned have occurred since 2000, center spokesman Randall Eardley said earlier this year.