Data sources

WildFire-Ready is a free public-safety service covering Western Canada and 18 western US states (Alaska to Texas), deepest in BC and Alberta. The dashboard pulls from official government sources wherever possible and clearly attributes any community-sourced or partner data layers below. Always verify with local authorities and call 911 in an emergency.

Wildfires & satellite hotspots

• BC Wildfire Service. Active wildfire locations, perimeters, status, and stage of control. Source: BC Wildfire Service / DataBC. Used under Open Government Licence — British Columbia.
• Alberta Wildfire. Active wildfire locations, perimeters, status. Source: Alberta Wildfire / Government of Alberta. Used under Open Government Licence — Alberta.
• Saskatchewan & Manitoba wildfires. Provincial active-fire data from the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency and the Manitoba Wildfire Service.
• Yukon & Northwest Territories wildfires. Territorial active-fire data from Yukon Wildland Fire Management and NWT Fire (Government of the Northwest Territories).
• Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS). National active-fire points and perimeters, used where a provincial agency-direct feed isn't available. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service. cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca.
• US wildfires — NIFC / WFIGS. Active US fire incidents, perimeters, size, and containment across the 18 covered states. Source: National Interagency Fire Center (Wildland Fire Interagency Geospatial Services). US federal public domain. Per-incident details link to InciWeb. Supplemented in-state by CAL FIRE (California) and the Alaska Fire Service (BLM).
• NASA FIRMS. Near-real-time satellite hotspots from VIIRS / MODIS instruments, continent-wide. Source: NASA FIRMS.
• Observed smoke plumes — NOAA HMS. Satellite-analyzed smoke-plume polygons (light / medium / heavy) from the NOAA Hazard Mapping System. Source: NOAA HMS. US federal public domain.

Evacuation & fire alerts

• Canada. EmergencyInfoBC (BC evacuation orders & alerts), Alberta Emergency Alert, the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, the Government of the Northwest Territories, and national alerts via Alert Ready.
• United States. State evacuation feeds from the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (CalOES), Oregon Office of Emergency Management, and Arizona DEMA; county evacuation zones via Genasys Protect (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico); and National Weather Service Fire Warnings and Red Flag Warnings across all 18 states.

Air quality, wind & weather

• Air Quality Health Index (AQHI, Canada). Source: Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). Used under the Open Government Licence — Canada.
• Air Quality Index (AQI, US). Preliminary real-time readings from the US EPA's AirNow network (US, not for regulatory use), used where no Canadian AQHI station is in range.
• Wind, temperature, humidity (per-fire). Source: real surface weather observations from Environment and Climate Change Canada SWOB-realtime stations. Each fire is matched to its nearest reporting Meteorological Service of Canada station and refreshed every 30 minutes.
• Precipitation radar (optional layer). Live global radar mosaic covering all of North America (Canada and the US, seamless). Source: Weather data by RainViewer. The forecast half of the same layer (beyond "now") uses the ECCC GDPS global precipitation model from ECCC GeoMet (Open Government Licence — Canada).

Fire weather & danger

• Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS). Fire Weather Index, Drought Code, and per-station weather observations. Source: Canadian Forest Service. Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS), Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Northern Forestry Centre, Edmonton, Alberta. cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca.
• US National Weather Service. Red Flag Warnings, Fire Weather Watches, and Fire Warnings across the 18 covered states. Source: NOAA / National Weather Service. US federal public domain.

Roads & closures

• DriveBC. Highway closures, incidents, advisories. Source: DriveBC / British Columbia Ministry of Transportation.
• 511 Alberta. Highway closures, incidents, advisories. Source: 511 Alberta / Government of Alberta.
• US road closures. Highway closures and incidents from state 511 / Department of Transportation services across the covered states (e.g. Washington State DOT, Caltrans, Utah DOT, and others), filtered to wildfire-related closures.

Optional layers (default off)

• Lightning (Blitzortung community network). Real-time strike points. Sampled, not exhaustive. Used with attribution: blitzortung.org. Non-commercial use only.
• Aircraft activity (OpenSky Network). Low-altitude ADS-B positions. We display unlabeled points only — we do not name, classify, or identify firefighting aircraft, and never publish callsigns or registrations. Sources: OpenSky Network and the adsb.lol community feed. Academic citation: Schäfer, M., Strohmeier, M., Lenders, V., Martinovic, I. and Wilhelm, M. (2014). Bringing Up OpenSky: A Large-scale ADS-B Sensor Network for Research. In Proceedings of the 13th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN), pages 83-94.
• GOES live satellite (NASA GIBS). 10-minute updates of cloud, smoke, and nighttime fire-glow imagery from GOES-East ABI GeoColor. Source: NASA EOSDIS GIBS / NOAA GOES-East. Public domain (data); imagery courtesy of NASA EOSDIS.
• GOES Fire Temperature (CIRA RAMMB SLIDER). A purpose-built thermal product that highlights active fire heat signatures. Source: CIRA RAMMB SLIDER at Colorado State University. NOAA public domain (data); CIRA attribution required for processed imagery.
• Fire Danger — Fire Weather Index (Copernicus GWIS). One seamless Fire Weather Index surface across all of North America, from the Copernicus Emergency Management Service / Global Wildfire Information System (ECMWF-computed FWI — the same index family Canada's CFFDRS is built on). Replaces the former Canada-only + US-only stitch so the rating reads consistently across the whole map. © European Union, Copernicus EMS / GWIS (JRC). gwis.jrc.ec.europa.eu.
• Smoke / aerosol imagery (NASA GIBS). MODIS Combined Value-Added Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) — daily mosaic showing smoke from above. Source: NASA EOSDIS GIBS.
• Global wildfires (NASA EONET). Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker — active wildfires worldwide outside our primary coverage area. Source: NASA EONET.
• Ignition risk overlay. Composite of the last 24 h of Blitzortung lightning strikes weighted by the nearest CWFIS Fire Weather Index station. Original analysis layer; combines attributions of both upstream sources.

Map & basemap

• Basemap tiles & styles © Mapbox and © OpenStreetMap contributors.

About this dashboard

WildFire-Ready is a free, ad-free, independent public-interest project. The desktop dashboard is a companion to the iOS / Android apps — it shows the same data on a bigger screen, optimised for content creators and people watching multiple regions at once. There is no login, no paywall, no analytics dashboard, and no data sold or shared with third parties.

Questions, partnerships, or corrections: team@wildfire-ready.ca.

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