Where the data comes from
The fire map, Fireline Lookup and the VIPR portal each draw on named sources, with their own refresh schedule and known limits. This page states them in plain language, so you can judge how far to trust what you see.
Incidents and perimeters
The fire map shows what the interagency fire community publishes, when it publishes it. We do not estimate size or containment. We only choose which of two published sizes to show, and we say which.
- Origin
- , the interagency service for incident points and perimeters. Two public feeds: Incident Locations, fed by , and Interagency Perimeters. No account and no key.
- Refresh
- Every 5 minutes while the map is open. The feeds cache for 5 minutes, so asking faster returns the same data. A hidden tab skips the refresh and catches up when you come back, if the data has gone stale.
- If it fails
- The map keeps what is on screen and shows no error. Only a first load or a manual refresh reports a problem.
- Also here
- Satellite hotspots (NASA FIRMS, VIIRS sensor), the 2,000 largest fires from 2001 to 2025 (over 10,000 acres) and the ten region outlines. Each is off until you switch it on.
Every 5 min while the map is open
Public feeds · no key · no account
1 · FetchBoth feeds are requested together every 5 minutes. The request revalidates with the server, so a stale copy in your browser cannot pass for new data.
Alerts, radar and lightning
Weather layers are U.S. government products, shown as published. The exception is lightning, a paid commercial feed, which is why it switches itself off.
- Alerts
- active alerts, new and updated, loaded when the map opens. They include the fire-weather alerts (Red Flag Warning, Fire Weather Watch, Fire Warning, Extreme Fire Danger, Dense Smoke Advisory) and a wider set of severe-weather alerts such as heat, wind, thunderstorm and flood. Alerts with no map area are listed but not drawn.
- At a fire
- Tap a fire and we ask the NWS for the observation station it lists first for that spot, its nearest, and show that station’s latest reading and the NWS forecast. The reading is from the station, not measured at the fire.
- Radar, sky
- Radar is the NEXRAD composite from NWS data, about every 5 minutes, served through the Iowa Environmental Mesonet. Clouds are NASA GOES-East imagery, blurring past zoom 7. The Day 1 outlook (Elevated, Critical, Extreme) updates a couple of times a day.
- Lightning
- Cloud-to-ground strikes over a rolling window of about 15 minutes, newest brightest. It is billed per map tile, so it turns off 30 minutes after you switch it on.
Minutes
- Fires · 5 min
- Radar · about 5 min
- Alerts · minutes
- Lightning · live
Hourly
- Air quality
- Smoke forecast
Daily
- Smoke, observed
- Fire outlook (SPC)
Static
- GACC regions
- Historical fires
- Base maps
Lightning switches itself off after 30 minutes
Source, not screenThe figure shows how often each source changes. The map itself re-fetches only the fire layer, every 5 minutes; the other layers load when the map opens or when you switch them on.
Smoke and air quality
Two views of smoke and one of air quality. They answer different questions, so they are separate layers.
Smoke seen from space
satellite smoke polygons, classed Light, Medium or Heavy. It says where smoke has been seen, not what reaches the ground.
Smoke predicted
NOAA surface smoke forecast, a model. The map asks for the current hour, rounded down, and draws it under the observed polygons.
What monitors read
EPA AirNow contours in the six standard categories. Read a contour as a regional picture, not as the air at one spot.
Good · AQI 0 to 50Air quality is satisfactory and poses little or no risk.
Contractor award records
Fireline Lookup is built from USFS agreement and dispatch-list records for contracted wildland fire resources. Contractors do not submit this data.
- Where from
- Agreements, with their priced schedule of items, and lists, published under the USFS program, plus small-business status from federal procurement data. They are normalised into one record per company.
- How often
- A nightly job collects new lists and agreements. Collection is paced, so a very new award can take several days to appear.
- What counts
- A is a day rate taken from an agreement’s schedule of items for one resource type. An award is a rate on an agreement, not proof a resource was dispatched or paid.
- What is public
- Free profiles show market bands, not what one company charges. Exact rates come from a separate signed-in service and are never in the page source.
From the nightly refresh
1 · RecordsAgreements with their priced schedule of items, and the dispatch priority lists that say who is called first.
A sole proprietor who trades under their own name shows as Independent Operator and is left out of name search. One who trades under a business name is listed under it. Either way they count in every market band and center roster.
How rate bands are computed
Each resource type gets five numbers, worked out from its priced awards. They describe the market for that type. They are not quotes.
- Low, high
- The cheapest and dearest priced award. One odd award moves these.
- Median
- The middle award. Half are at or below it, half at or above.
- P25, P75
- A quarter of awards fall at or below P25, three quarters at or below P75. The middle half sits between.
- Thin types
- Every band sits beside the number of priced awards behind it. A type with only a few awards gives a thin band, and a type with none says "No priced awards recorded" instead.
- Placement
- Value, mid or premium: where a company’s own median sits among all priced awards for that type. Below the 35th percentile is value, above the 75th is premium, in between is mid.
No priced awards recorded means the type exists but no awards carry a price yet.
Drag a slider to swap the lowest or highest award.
VIPR portal data
The VIPR portal shows a contractor its own book, scoped to one company by an access key. It uses records from the same nightly refresh as Lookup, joined to your agreements and seats.
Competitors appear as: not shown on this plan.
- Refresh
- Built from the same nightly refresh as Lookup. Every view shows the date of the snapshot it is drawn from. Sessions end after 12 hours.
- Scope
- One access key opens one company’s book. Other companies appear only as competitors in the paid tabs: as Competitor A, B on Standard, by name on Pro. Keep the key internal: anyone holding it can see your book.
- Seats
- A company holds one seat per resource unit, so it can sit at several ranks on one list. We count seats, not lists. #1#2#3#4#5#6#7#8Illustration
- Agreements
- Where we hold a copy you get a secure link that expires after 5 minutes. Copies are not held for every agreement: where we have none, the record says no copy on file.
What changed, and when
When we change how a number is sourced or worked out, it goes here with the date.
Report an error
If a number looks wrong, tell us. Most data is passed through from its source, so we check there first and tell you who to contact if the source itself is wrong.
Tell us
Say what looks wrong and where. A fire name, a resource type or a company is enough.
We check the source
We compare with the feed it came from. If we misread it, we fix it. If the source is wrong, we say so and point you to the owner.
We log the outcome
Fixes that change a number go in the update log above.