A major wildfire erupted in the South Jersey Pinelands over the weekend, scorching more than 2300 acres as of this morning.

The so-called California Fire Branch fire was first reported on Saturday afternoon in Waterford, Camden County, and burned through Warden State Forest crossing the Mullica River, affecting parts of Chemung Township and Burlington County as well.

Now, two campgrounds were evacuated out of caution, but no structures were affected.

State officials say the fire is now 100% contained, but warned that smoke may persist in the area for coming days.

The blaze is the largest of the year so far.

Firefighters have been busy to start 2025 as persistent drought and windy weather have elevated wildfire risk.

And as Ted Goldberg reports, the peak spring fire season is only now beginning.

Its peak wildfire season in New Jersey.

And this year could be a very busy one for the Forest Fire Service.

We're making progress, but we're still under a drought.

William Love is an assistant division forest fire warden.

He says recent rains have helped a little, but the last seven months of drought conditions have turned some of our state forests into kindling.

Things are just really tinder dry and like any little thing that could spark is more likely to spark something.

We're still under a severe drought in the southern part of the state and and, you know, to a lesser extent in the northern part of the state.

So now we're entering wildfire season, our chief wildfire season, which is the spring.

So it's a little alarming.

Timely rainfall rains each week.

That brings down the fire threat and it also helps to replenish soil moisture so farmers and gardeners can get ready to plant their gardens.

Love says the ongoing drought increases the risk of fires spreading in Wharton State Forest, which normally has wildfires and other places statewide that don't expect fires.

Some of these areas we're having fires.

The reason we're having fires is because there are wetlands that aren't wetlands anymore due to the drought.

We had that industrial wildfire last year in Essex County.

You know, that typically that would be under water would be ducks in there.

During a recent wildfire.

Love saw just how dry parts of New Jersey have gotten.

Look at the mountain or else it's dead.

It shouldn't be dead.

It's evergreen.

It's not rural.

It's always green.

State climatologist Dave Robinson says more rain is needed to get New Jersey out of drought conditions.

We're not going in dire straits right now.

Reservoirs are below normal, but they're not exception, only below normal.

So the winter we held our own and made some improvement, but we're not out of the woods yet.

The last two months have brought some rain, but they were still below average for this time of year.

January was the third driest January on record, while last September and October were two of the driest months in state history.

Since that time, we had a wide window of opportunity to refill our reservoirs and our groundwater, and we haven't quite gotten there.

And that window of opportunity is closing because by the time we get to, may we start consuming more, more water.

And again, that's humans and plants.

The Forest Fire Service likes to get ahead of wildfires with prescribed burning or intentional fires that burn up fuels without spreading uncontrollably.

Recent weather has been too windy for that and Stockton Professor Matt Olson says the state would be smart to remove more trees altogether.

I think we need to step it up a little bit in terms of like thinning our forest to improve not just forest health and things like that, but also to reduce risk of really severe fire like ground crown fire spread and that kind of thing.

In the meantime, the Forest Fire Service might be a benefactor of Governor Phil Murphy's budget proposal.

It would give them an extra million dollars.

Money, Love says, is sorely needed.

We're ordering new trucks, ordering new bulldozers.

Some of our bulldozers from the Carter administration.

So, you know, any way we can update those, you know, it's going to be a bonus for us.

To definitely help the fleet because the fleet's getting older.

In forest fire.

So modernizing the fleet and hopefully more employees.

More employees to fight more fires across the state.

Recovering from record drought last year in Mays Landing.

I'm Ted Goldberg.

NJ Spotlight News.