3D wildfire replay
About the replay
Watch a wildfire grow, map by map, in 3D
The fire replay plays back how a wildfire spread: every perimeter that was mapped during the fire, in order, on 3D terrain. Pick a fire, press play, and turn the map to see the ridges and drainages it ran through.
Where the data comes from
- Mapped perimeters
- Each step is a real perimeter from the national interagency daily perimeter feed (NIFC WFIGS), mapped by infrared flights or GPS on the ground. Between two maps the replay fills in the growth; it does not model fire behavior.
- Acres and containment
- The acres inside each mapped perimeter and the containment the incident reported at the time.
- Key moments
- Discovery, the biggest single runs between two maps and containment milestones, worked out from those same records.
- Weather
- Hourly wind, temperature and humidity at the fire from the Open-Meteo historical weather archive (ERA5), and the National Weather Service warnings that were in effect.
- Terrain and imagery
- Elevation from the AWS open terrain tiles and satellite imagery from Esri.
Questions
Which fires can I replay?
Fires that were mapped often enough to show how they grew, mostly large fires from this season and last. A fire mapped only once or twice has nothing to replay.
Why does a fire jump instead of growing smoothly?
The replay can only be as detailed as the mapping. When a fire went days between flights, the growth between those two maps arrives in one step.
Can I share a replay?
Yes. The address in your browser always points to the fire you are watching.
Not for emergency use. These are records of past fire growth. For a fire burning now, see the live fire map and follow your county sheriff and local emergency management.
Live wildfire mapBurn history since 2005Every data source and how we use it