About the Data

Everything on this site traces back to official sources, refreshed automatically every morning. Here's exactly where each piece comes from.

Fire danger ratings & forecasts

Daily danger ratings, observations, thresholds, and 7-day forecasts come from the interagency Fire Environment Mapping System (FEMS), which processes Remote Automated Weather Station (RAWS) data through the National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS). Each area's Fire Danger Operating Plan defines its rating breakpoints and local watchout thresholds. This is the same data federal fire managers use for daily staffing and response decisions. Ratings update each morning around 3am; this site rebuilds shortly after.

Weather & air quality

Weather forecasts load live from the National Weather Service each time you visit a page — U.S. Government data in the public domain. Air quality (US AQI and PM2.5) loads live from Open-Meteo, used under the CC BY 4.0 license. Red Flag Warnings and other alerts come from the NWS alerts service.

National situation report

Preparedness levels and large-incident summaries come from the NICC Incident Management Situation Report, published daily by the National Interagency Coordination Center.

AI overviews

Each area's "Overview" is written once daily by Claude (Anthropic's AI model). It is grounded in that morning's official inputs — the area's FEMS/NFDRS data, the NWS forecast and active alerts for the area, and the NICC situation report — plus a small number of web searches for current fire restrictions and local incident news. Claude is instructed to state only what those sources support and to prefer information from the last 48 hours. Every overview lists its sources.

AI-generated summaries can contain mistakes. For decisions about safety, evacuations, or burning, always rely on official sources: your county sheriff, local fire authorities, and the agencies linked in each overview.

Maps

Fire Danger Rating Area boundaries come from each dispatch center's Fire Danger Operating Plan. County references are derived from U.S. Census Bureau boundaries (public domain). Base maps © OpenStreetMap contributors, © CARTO; maps rendered with Leaflet.

For developers: public data API

The daily fire danger data behind this site is available as machine-readable JSON, free to use:

/api/v1/fire-danger.json — per-FDRA danger rating (with a numeric 1–5 index), indicators with thresholds, watchout status, 7-day forecast, counties, centroid, and the day's overview. Regenerates each morning.
/api/v1/fdra-boundaries.json — FDRA polygons as GeoJSON (join on slug; changes rarely, cache it).
/api/v1/timeseries.json — full daily time series (danger index 1–5, ERC/BI, weather indicators) per FDRA, one file for charting.
/api/v1/history/index.json — archive of per-day snapshots (/api/v1/history/YYYY-MM-DD.json).
/api/v1/index.json — discovery document with update schedule.

CORS is open, no key required. Within v1, fields are append-only — we won't rename or remove them. Underlying NFDRS data is U.S. Government work in the public domain; we appreciate attribution to BeWildfireAware. Please don't use this feed for emergency decision-making — verify with official sources.

Update schedule

The site rebuilds automatically every morning (~3:20am MT) after the day's NFDRS data publishes. Weather and air quality load live on every visit. The "Last updated" stamp on each area page reflects the fire danger data; the weather strip shows its own timestamps.

Questions about the data? Get in touch — we welcome corrections and suggestions.