AccountSettings
Live
Settings · Preferences & Notices
Local · No account

Settings

Preferences are saved to this browser only. No account needed. The disclaimer below applies to every screen.

Visual tone

Aesthetic

Switch between three coordinated dark themes. Affects radii, font weight, and chip casing.

ActiveEditorial standard
ScopeAll screens
Units

Display units

Distances, wind speeds, and temperatures across Status, Live Map, Fire-Weather What-If, Safety, and the full report page all respect these.

LocaleAuto · US
ConversionLive
Temperature
Wind speed
Distance
Important notice

This is an informational tool, not an emergency service.

In an active emergency, call 911 and follow evacuation orders from local authorities. Do not rely on this app to make life-safety decisions.

01

Cross-check with official sources

The National Weather Service (weather.gov), your state forestry / Cal Fire site, ready.gov, and your county emergency-management office are authoritative. This app is not.

02

Detection delays exist

NASA satellite detections (FIRMS) lag the real fire by roughly 1-4 hours. Named-incident metadata from NIFC and Cal Fire is updated on each agency's own schedule and may also be delayed.

03

The risk score is an approximation

A public-data fire-weather index calibrated against historical fire records. It is not a substitute for professional fire-weather services like the NWS Storm Prediction Center.

04

Shelters: open vs. potential

Open shelters reported by the FEMA National Shelter System appear with live status and capacity. Everything else is a potential evacuation point drawn from OpenStreetMap and the NCES public-school database, not a confirmed open site. Call ahead during a real emergency.

05

What this is

An independent, informational tool, not a commercial or operational emergency service. It comes with no guarantees of uptime or accuracy, and there's no team monitoring it around the clock.

Full details: Terms of Use · Privacy Policy · Accessibility

About

Data sources

NASA FIRMSSatellite
Real-time fire detections
NIFCIncidents
Named incident metadata
Cal FireIncidents
California operations
OpenWeatherMapWeather
Current conditions
Open-MeteoWeather
Drought (KBDI) history
CopernicusSatellite
Sentinel-2 vegetation (NDVI)
US CensusGeodata
State / county lookup
FEMAFederal
Disasters & open shelters
MapTilerCartography
Map tiles
OpenStreetMapGeodata
Base map & POI
NCESPublic DB
School database
NLCDLand cover
Fuel type (ignition model)
FPA-FODHistorical
Fire records (calibration)

Real-time satellite fire detections from NASA FIRMS. Active incident metadata from NIFC and Cal Fire. Current conditions from OpenWeatherMap, with drought (KBDI) history from Open-Meteo and live vegetation stress (NDVI) from Copernicus Sentinel-2. The risk score is a transparent rule-based fire-weather index, based on the Fosberg index and benchmarked against Hot-Dry-Windy, calibrated per state against historical fire records (FPA-FOD), using US Census geographies. The machine-learning ignition model also reads land cover (fuel type) from NLCD / EnviroAtlas. Federal disaster declarations and open shelters from FEMA. Map tiles by MapTiler with OpenStreetMap data.

Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2026.
We acknowledge the use of data and imagery from LANCE FIRMS, operated by NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
Weather data by Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0) and OpenWeather.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, tiles by MapTiler.
This product uses the FEMA OpenFEMA API, but is not endorsed by FEMA.
WatchFlameBuilt 2026
FIRMS
NIFC
CAL FIRE
OWM
OPEN-METEO
CDSE
CENSUS
FEMA
OSM
NCES