America's Summer Camps Are Facing a New Climate Reality. Here's How They're Adapting

July 21, 2026:

America's Summer Camps Are Facing a New Climate Reality. Here's How They're Adapting

Day campers at Reseda Park in the San Fernando Valley use buckets for a water fight at the Valley park where temperatures hovered around 100 degrees. —Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times—Getty Images

Anna Ellena-Rosenau remembers summers at Mountain Meadow Ranch Summer Camp, founded by her grandfather 70 years ago. Nestled in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, the weather was always mild—with high temperatures usually contained to one or two heat waves a summer.

“When I was a camper, we would come to our campfire with jeans and sweatshirts and beanies because it would get so cool,” says Ellena-Rosenau, now the camp’s director. “Now, you could do the whole campfire in your shorts and a tank top.”

In a warming world, summer camp is not what it used to be. The last 11 years have all been among the warmest years observed in instrumental record and perhaps at no time is that more apparent than in the summer. Summer camps around the U.S. are reckoning with how to safely prioritize outdoor play amid extreme weather—from wildfires, to record breaking temperatures, to stronger summer storms.

Most camps have always had plans in place for extreme weather. “This is not new for camps that are typically outdoors, in the summer, and in warmer climates,” says Henry DeHart, CEO of the American Camp Association (ACA). “There have always been days where the heat index has gotten high. Now, what’s happening is that the instances of this are increasing. From a camp planning perspective, whether you’re dealing with five days of extreme heat in the summer or 8 or 10 days, you still have a plan to deal with it.”

But after flooding killed 28 people, including 25 campers, last summer at Camp Mystic in Texas, more and more parents are concerned about camp safety plans and security. “Every family I talked to during the off season, that was the number one question,” says Brooks Johnson, director of Brown Ledge Camp in Colchester, Vt.; over the past few years the Green Mountain State has also seen its share of flooding.

ACA-accredited camps like Mountain Meadow and Brown Ledge are required to have plans in place for extreme weather events like wildfires and floods, says DeHart. “Our goal at ACA is to make sure camps have good plans in place so that their campers and staff can be safe, because kids need these experiences more than ever,” he says. “In the age of the internet and phones and social media, kids are outside less, they’re active less, and they’re building face-to-face relationships less. Camp is more important now than ever, and climate impacts are increasing, and so [they] have to be really vigilant about having good plans related to that.”

For Johnson, part of that has involved coordinating with local officials on evacuation areas, and having a structural engineer ensure that buildings are storm ready. “It’s a lot of planning to prepare for the worst and hoping that you never have to use it,” he says.

But on the day-to-day, activity periods are now shorter, and campers spend more time in the pool or doing other aquatic activities. “There was one day where it was too hot to ride [horses], so they put their boots and bathing suits on and bathed the horses,” says Johnson.

At Mountain Meadow, water bottles are now used as passes to activities to ensure kids always have their water bottles on them and are staying hydrated. The camp no longer offers a session in August—when temperatures are highest and the wildfire risk is greatest. In 2021 and 2024, they were forced to cancel sessions due to wildfire smoke.

Things might look a little different from when she was a kid, but Ellena-Rosenau notes that that’s just how it goes at camp. “Camp is about adapting and being flexible,” she says. “It’s been 70 years of this camp, and every summer we’re tweaking and evaluating and finding new ways to beat the heat.”

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