# firemap.us

> Real-time map of wildfire activity in the contiguous United States. Visualizes active wildfire incidents, perimeters, prescribed burns, MODIS/VIIRS hotspots, and GOES satellite-derived potential fire activity. Data is refreshed roughly every 10 minutes.

This site is a map visualization, not a content site. The most useful resources for an agent are the live JSON datasets that drive the map, listed below. Each is a GeoJSON FeatureCollection unless noted.

## Live data

- [Major incidents](https://firemap.us/incidents.json): WFIGS major wildfire incidents (≥10 acres or staffed). Properties include incident name, containment %, acres, cause, discovery date.
- [Minor incidents](https://firemap.us/minor-incidents.json): WFIGS minor wildfire incidents (small/unstaffed). Same schema as major incidents.
- [Perimeters](https://firemap.us/perimeters.json): WFIGS wildfire perimeter polygons, joined to their parent incidents.
- [Prescribed burns](https://firemap.us/prescribed-burns.json): WFIGS active prescribed fire incidents.
- [Hotspots](https://firemap.us/hotspots.json): NASA FIRMS MODIS C6.1 + Suomi/NOAA-20 VIIRS C2 active fire detections, last 48 hours, contiguous US + Hawaii. Confidence-filtered.
- [GOES potential fire activity](https://firemap.us/goes.json): Aggregated polygon contour of GOES-East (GOES-19) + GOES-West (GOES-18) ABI-L2-FDCC fire/hot-spot characterization product, last ~30 minutes. Both satellites must agree (intersection, not union) for a region to be included.

## Pages

- [Interactive map](https://firemap.us/): main map view
- [About](https://firemap.us/about): data sources, methodology, and disclaimers
- [Support](https://firemap.us/support): donate to keep the site running

## Methodology

GOES contour polygons are produced from the FDCC Mask product. Mask codes are mapped to confidence (1.0 for processed/saturated/cloud-contaminated fire detections, 0.5 for high probability, 0.3 medium, 0.1 low), aggregated frame-wise via max over a 30-minute window, smoothed with a 3×3 mean kernel, then the 0.6 confidence iso-line is extracted. East and West satellites are intersected to suppress single-satellite false positives (sun glint, view-angle artifacts).

Hotspots are filtered to confidence > 50 (or "high") and clipped to the contiguous US polygon.

## Data caveats

This site is for situational awareness only. It is not authoritative and must not be used for evacuation or other safety decisions. Heed your local fire authorities. Data may be stale, incomplete, or wrong. Hotspots and GOES detections include false positives. Containment and acres lag real-world conditions.

## Sources

- [NIFC WFIGS](https://data-nifc.opendata.arcgis.com/) — incidents, perimeters, prescribed burns
- [NASA FIRMS](https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/) — MODIS + VIIRS hotspots
- [NOAA GOES-R series](https://www.goes-r.gov/) — GOES-East (19) and GOES-West (18) ABI-L2-FDCC