This Quick Links page brings together a collection links useful for emergency managers and business continuity professionals in gaining situational awareness on current incidents and monitoring threat conditions for wildfires. While the focus is on California many of the resources are national in scope.
CAL FIRE Current Incidents Page: This CALFIRE site provide a map of active wildfires in California. It does not include smaller local fires under about 10 acres. Generally the wildfire information is updated twice a day (morning and evening), though if CALFIRE releases a notice mid-day it is usually posted when issued prior to the evening update. Also, fires in which CALFIRE is not directly involved such as those on federal lands may be updated less frequently. Check the last updated date on the individual fire pages. CALFIRE now also has a 3D Incident Map (Beta) available.
InciWeb Current Incidents: InciWeb focuses on wildfires that involve federal lands. The overview information is available both in a map view and a list view. Usually the wildfire information is updated twice a day (morning and evening), though wildfires in monitoring status may be updated less frequently. Check the current as of date in the incident information section for the individual fires. Note, the update time in the Fire Information – Basic Information section is East Coast Time and usually Pacific Coast Time on the daily status update posts. Large fires on InciWeb have information about the wildfire, news, and announcements, contact information and hours of operation, maps, photographs, and videos.
Geographic Area Coordination Center News & Notes: Predictive Services for the Northern California Geographic Area Coordination Center and the Southern / Central California Geographic Area Coordination Center maintain a News & Notes pages that provide snapshot updates of larger wildfires within their territory, especially if involving federal lands or resources. The update frequency depends on the geographic areas preparedness level. The five preparedness levels range from the lowest (1) to the highest (5). Each one includes specific management actions and involves increasing levels of interagency resource commitments. At the higher levels updates are usually twice a day, morning and evening, with potential additional updates.
National Interagency Coordination Center Incident Management Situation Report: This report provides a synopsis of “large” wildfire activity across the United States. “Large” fires for this purpose are defined as those over 100 acres in timber fuel models or over 300 acres in grass fuel models. Wildland fires that do not meet large fire criteria, but have a nationally recognized incident management team assigned, are also included. The update frequency depends on the National Preparedness Level. The five preparedness levels range from the lowest (1) to the highest (5). Generally, at Level 1 the updates are once a week on Fridays, at Level 2 it is daily Monday – Friday, and at Level 3 it is daily. The National Wildland Fire Preparedness Levels are dictated by fuel and weather conditions, fire activity, and fire suppression resource availability throughout the country. Archives of the reports are also available. GIS map files for current fires are also available.
California Wildfire Situational Awareness Dashboard: This dashboard is maintained by the California Wildfire Forecast and Threat Intelligence Integration Center (WFTIIC). It has a map of current wildfires in the State and provides a basic overview of fires the WFTIIC is tracking, including size, containment, and number of structures damaged/destroyed.
Risk Management Assistance (RMA) Dashboard: The RMA Dashboard, created by the Wildland Fire Management Research, Development, and Application, is a series of tabs to products to help line officers, agency administrators, fire managers, incident management teams, area commands, geographic area coordination centers, and multi-agency coordination groups to make more risk-informed decisions to achieve safer and improved outcomes. It has tabs for Incident Stats, Fire Danger by Protective Service Area (PSA), Severe Fire Danger, Fire Weather Matrix, Long-Term Assessments, Season-Ending Analysis, and Smoke.
ALERTCalifornia Wildfire Cameras: This page brings together live feeds to more than 1,000 high-definition, pan-tilt-zoom cameras deployed across California, providing a 24-hour backcountry network with near-infrared night vision to monitor disasters such as active wildfires. ALERTCalifornia cameras can perform 360-degree sweeps approximately every two minutes and can view as far as 60 miles on a clear day and 120 miles on a clear night. For live feeds of cameras in other states in the Western US, check out AlertWildfire, which covers Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.
Northern California Predictive Services Fire Weather Webcast: This daily webcast by the Northern California Geographic Area Coordination Center’s Predictive Services provides an overview of weather conditions that can affect wildfire activity. While the focus is on the Northern California operations area, it also includes some infomration for the Southern California region.
National Weather Service Fire Weather Map: This map displays hazards area of Red Flag Warnings and Fire Weather Watches. It is important to note that Warnings and Watches on the map appear when issued and may have effective times/date slightly in the future. There is a California specific map as well as a National map. For the California map you can use the layers option in the upper right corner you can select various geographical boundary overlays: Emergency Communication Center Dispatch Area (ECCDA), Counties, or National Weather Service Fire Weather Zones. For the National map various options are available under the Boundaries tab.
NOAA Storm Prediction Center’s Fire Weather Outlook Maps: These maps highlight elevated, critical, and extreme fire danger areas along with regions with a probability for isolated or scattered dry thunderstorms. Maps are available for Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3-8 Outlooks.
U.S. Day 3-7 Hazards Outlook: This map depicts possible impending weather-related hazards during the medium range 3-7 day period. The outlook is only updated Monday-Friday. Towards the bottom of the page are links to download Shapefiles and KML.
Santa Ana Wildfire Threat Index: This index categorizes Santa Ana winds based on anticipated fire potential and provides a 6-day outlook. This product is produced by the USDA Forest Service and Predictive Services
National Weather Service Fire Weather Snoopers: These pages by the National Weather Service highlight weather stations that are “flirting” with fire weather conditions and/or have reached red flag warning conditions.
Additional weather resources are available on the CRA Weather Quick Links Page.
Current Fuels and Fire Behavior Advisories: This page from the National Interagency Coordination Center lists the Current Fuels and Fire Behavior Advisories in effect for the US. Advisories are issues when exceptional or extreme circumstance pose a risks to firefighter or public safety resulting from abnormal fuels and/or fire behavior. Conditions that could be reasonably expected normally do not warrant a Fuels and Fire Behavior Advisory. The page also has a link to the the Fuels & Fire Danger Briefing recording.
7-Day Significant Fire Potential Outlooks: These outlook are generated for each of the National Interagency Fire Center’s Geographic Area Coordination Centers (GACC). They looks at the “Significant Fire Potential” for each Protective Service Area (PSA) within a region. “Significant Fire Potential” is defined as “the likelihood that a wildland fire event will require mobilization of additional resources from outside the area in which the fire situation originates”. It is a forecast of Significant Fire Potential only, which is a function of fuel conditions, weather, and resource availability. It assesses the daily probability for occurrence of a new large fire and/or the daily potential for significant new growth on existing fires. There are a couple of different ways to view the Significant Fire Potential Outlooks: National Map (this map has links to zoom into the various GACCs), Northern California GACC text narrative, Southern/Central California GACC text narrative, and static pdf maps for the contiguous US. To learn more about the specifics of each of the color designations on the map see the Explanation of the 7-Day Significant Fire Potential Product.
Energy Release Component (ERC): The ERC is a number related to the available energy (BTU) per unit area (square foot) within the flaming front at the head of a fire. Since this number represents the potential “heat release” per unit area in the flaming zone, it can provide guidance to several important fire activities. It may also be considered a composite fuel moisture value as it reflects the contribution that all live and dead fuels have to potential fire intensity. Charts are available for each of the Protective Service Areas in Northern California and Southern/Central California.
Burning Index: The burning index is an estimate of the potential difficulty of fire containment as it relates to the flame length at the most rapidly spreading portion of a fire’s perimeter. Charts are available for each of the Protective Service Areas in Northern California and Southern/Central California.
100-Hour Fuel Moisture: Computed from 24–hour average conditions composed of day length, hours of rain, and daily temperature/humidity ranges. It can also be used as a very rough estimate of the average moisture content of the forest floor from three-fourths inch to four inches below the surface. Charts are available for each of the Protective Service Areas in Northern California and Southern/Central California.
Lightning Ignition Efficiency Map: Lightning fires are started by strikes to ground that have a component called a continuing current. All positive discharges have a continuing current, and about 20% of negative discharges have one. Ignition depends on the duration of the current and the kind of fuel the lightning hits. On this map the ignition efficiency on a 1 km pixel is given on a per discharge basis. That is, if the efficiency is high, then about 9 discharges will result in one ignition; if the efficiency is extreme, about 5 or fewer discharges will result in an ignition.
Seasonal (4-Month) Significant Fire Potential Outlooks: These outlook are generated for each of the National Interagency Fire Center’s Geographic Area Coordination Centers (GACC). They looks at the “Significant Fire Potential” for each region over the next four months, categories into above normal, normal, and below normal. New outlooks are usually released the first of the month (if the first falls on a holiday or during the the winter months a weekend the release may be pushed to the next workday). Northern California, which includes the Hawaii region, and the Southern/Central California region each produce their own seasonal outlook. There is also a National that covers all the GACC regions. The National Interagency Fire Center’s Predictive Services also releases a monthly podcast briefing covering the seasonal outlook. On a somewhat different release schedule there is a North American Seasonal Fire Assessment and Outlook that covers Canada, United States, and Mexico.
AirNow Map: The EPA’s AirNow Map includes data for air quality monitors in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. For the Current Air Quality the “Ozone and PM” includes data for ozone, PM2.5, and PM10. Each hour the highest NowCast AQI among the three pollutants is displayed. The Air Quality Forecast is a prediction of the day’s overall AQI issued by state and local air quality forecasters.
PurpleAir: PurpleAir is a community system of PM (10, 2.5, 1.0) low-cost sensors measuring particulate matter. Data from the sensors is made publicly available and is viewable in an online map. Sensors mounted indoors have a black circle. When clicking on a sensor a 10-min average trend chart appears covering the last 72 hours.
NOAA Hazard Mapping System (HMS) Fire and Smoke Product: The smoke density information provided in this map is qualitatively described using light, medium, and heavy labels that are assigned based on the apparent thickness (opacity) of the smoke in the satellite imagery. Every day around 7-8 am Eastern Time a new HMS session is started creating a fresh map for North America. Since the analysis generally requires a sequential set of satellite images to help distinguish smoke from clouds and other atmospheric aerosols, the first smoke analysis for the current day is usually produced around the local noon time – until then, only fire detection points may be available. Additional smoke analysis occurs throughout the day until sunset or as observation conditions permit.
California Smoke Information: This site is a voluntary effort by public agencies to coordinate and aggregate information for California communities affected by smoke. It also includes links to all of the local air quality districts in California.
Additional resources are available on CRA’s Wildfire Smoke Quick Links Page
Page Last Update: February 26, 2026
