Wildfire Explorer is made for the public
Supported by a USDA grant, Wildfire Explorer aims to increase access to wildfire data in the United States.
Cornea’s Wildfire Explorer was created for use by the public. It includes the entire Continental United States — along with Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Guam — because wildfires now affect all U.S. states and territories, with many of them now facing year-round threats.
The data used by Wildfire Explorer was sourced from publicly available databases (details below), and is updated hourly. Historical burn data is updated daily at midnight.
The data generated by wildfires can be used to model and predict future fire behavior.
This is what Cornea’s predictive capabilities entail: using gathered wildfire data alongside related and important data streams like weather and terrain information, to generate predictive insights about where wildfires might go and how they might behave under different conditions.

About the Data
What was included?
Wildfire Explorer currently sources data from two publicly available datasets, listed below. These are refreshed hourly and are also archived once a fire becomes “inactive.”
Wildfire datasets:
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NIFC Active Incidents
Active incident and historical incident data are pulled from NIFC, the National Interagency Fire Center. In the United States, NIFC is the official agency that offers logistical support center for wildland firefighting an other emergencies. This includes the management of active and historical data for wildland fires.
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Calfire
Active wildfire data for California is partially sourced from Calfire, the state’s self-managed wildfire agency. Calfire’s independent incident database contains some — but not all — of the data points that are captured in NIFC datasets.
Environmental datasets:
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NASA FIRMS Satellites
NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) provides near-real-time (NRL) infrared and hotspot data. Wildfire Explorer ingests the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard three separate NASA satellites, which together provide comprehensive coverage of hotspots in the Contiguous Unites States, and Hawaii.
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AirNow
AirNow provides high-quality, reliable data for air quality. Air Quality Index (AQI) is a comprehensive air quality metric that includes wildfire smoke, and be used to assess air quality around fire events. AirNow sources data from high-quality national sources including the EPA, NOAA, and the National Parks Service.
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National Weather Service
The National Weather Service is the official weather service of the United States government, and provides high-quality, reliable weather data to the public. NWS is managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
What was excluded?
In an effort to present the most relevant data, Wildfire Explorer excludes some fires from public views like national maps, state maps, and fire lists. Although the excluded fires aren’t shown in “live” views, they still exist in the database, get a unique incident page, and get archived as “past fires.”
Excluded fires:
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Size: One acre or smaller
Eliminating extremely small fires helps clean up “noise” in the overall wildfire landscape.
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Last Updated: More than 7 days
Once a fire has not been updated in 7 days, our system considers it stale, and it is removed from active views. The stale fire keeps its unique incident page, but it is not added to “past fires” unless its containment reaches 100%. It may be added back to active views if it is updated again in source databases.
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Containment: 100% contained
Fires that are 100% contained are considered past incidents, and can be found in our Past Fires section. When available, the date contained is provided.
Interpreting the Data
Data Recency
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Imports occur every hour.
Wildfire Explorer imports core fire data from NIFC and CALFIRE once per hour.
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Imported data may be outdated.
Imported data is not necessarily new (“fresh”) at the time of import, and can possibly be outdated (“stale”), even though it was recently imported. Wildfire Explorer adds additional messaging throughout to clarify when data was most recently updated.
Maps & Geography
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Fire Origin vs Fire Perimeter
A fire’s point-of-origin is the place (single point) that the fire started. A fire’s perimeter is the total acreage (area) that a fire has burned. The point-of-origin is always inside of the perimeter.
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Fire perimeters are not realtime
It is important to note that fire perimeters are not realtime and should not be referenced as “live” representations of where fires are actively burning:
- Fire perimeters have unique refresh cycles
Perimeters are updated with different (unique) intervals from the fire itself. If a fire perimeter is available for a given fire, its unique updated time will display immediately above the fire perimeter. - Perimeters represent accumulated burn, not active burn
Fire perimeters represent everywhere a given fire has ever burned, not necessarily the area of “active burn” (live flames). Active burn location is not possible to ascertain from perimeter alone, and typically rely on additional data such as infrared, heat, and / or satellite data.
- Fire perimeters have unique refresh cycles
Wildfires vs prescribed fires
Wildfires are unplanned, unwanted fires
- Wildfires are unplanned, unwanted fires that can be destructive to human society and the natural environment.
- They are managed through a number of “containment” techniques that aim to reduce harm to economic, social an environmental targets.
Prescribed Fires are planned, controlled fires
- Prescribed fires are are controlled fires that are intentionally started by fire and land management teams.
- Prescribed fires are used to control and reduce the possibility of unwanted or uncontrolled future fires. In the United States, prescribed fires are the primary tool used to prevent destructive wildfires.
Want to help improve Wildfire Explorer?
We’re looking to hear from real users on how they use the site, and what they think. Help us improve the product and plan future updates.
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