“The extremes seem to be lasting longer,” he told me, standing amid the construction of the home he is rebuilding among the charred acres near Willow. “The rain cycles, they might last a little longer, the warm weather might last a little longer.”

Statistics bear this out. The average winter temperature in Alaska has increased by six degrees over the past 60 years, and Alaska’s has had more extremely hot days and fewer extremely cold days over the last few decades, according to the National Climate Assessment. Precipitation has increased too, as winters see more rain and less snow.

Alaska Average Temperature Change by Decade

The nation is seeing an uptick fires this year, as conflagrations torch acres in Washington state and California. So far, 8.1 million acres have burned across the country between January 1 and August 31 of 2015. Over the same time period last year, only 2.7 million acres burned. The majority of the country’s fires, though, occur in Alaska.

Fires have always been a part of the Alaskan landscape, as much a part of nature as spring rains or winter snows. But this winter had little snow, and the spring featured record warm temperatures, setting extremely dry conditions, said Sam Harrel, a spokesman with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska Fire Service. On one day near the Summer Solstice, lighting struck the state around 15,000 times, setting off dozens of fires, he said. Out of the 700-plus fires that burned in Alaska this summer, lightning caused 417.

At different points this summer, more than 200 fires were burning in Alaska at once (there’s just one currently burning).

Alaska’s fires might also be more intense than they’ve been in the past, which has worrying implications for the soil, according to Ted Schuur, a professor at Northern Arizona University who travels to the state every summer to study the soil and forest fires.

Much of Alaska is located on permafrost, once permanently-frozen soil that is beginning to thaw as temperatures rise. When that permafrost melts on the coast, it can accelerate erosion and wipe out entire swaths of land. Inland, intense fires can burn the soil that insulates that permafrost, forcing it to melt even faster. And when permafrost melts, it may release carbon into the atmosphere, Schuur said. “As things warm up, places like Alaska that have a lot of carbon stored in the soil might not always be that way. A lot of that carbon might be lost and end up back in the atmosphere, making climate change go faster.”

Normally a cold winter would help re-freeze the soil and slow the melting of permafrost, he said. But the warmer air might prevent that from happening now.

Of course, there are more immediate things to worry about than the melting of Alaska’s permafrost. Like how to rebuild the homes lost in the fire. I talked to a man who goes by the name “Tacoma the Fly” (because of the fishing flies he makes). He used to live in a school bus outside of Willow but it burned down in the Sockeye Fire, and he only had time to grab a change of clothes and a charger. Community members in Willow are working to build him a new house, but in the meantime, he has nowhere to live, and it’s getting colder.