Colorado Wildfire Map: Live Fire and Smoke Tracker
Every active wildfire in Colorado on one live map, with acreage, containment, satellite smoke, and the fires closest to you. The data comes straight from the National Interagency Fire Center and refreshes automatically, so what you see below is current right now.
For questions, updates, or corrections, please email me here.
Colorado Wildfire Tracker
Loading current fire data…
Fire data from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC / WFIGS); smoke from NOAA's Hazard Mapping System; fire weather alerts from the National Weather Service. Only fully contained (100%) fires are hidden. Locations are approximate and conditions change hourly. Always check official sources before making any travel or evacuation decision. Tracker version 2026-07-06c.
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How to use this map
Tap any fire on the map or in the list to see where it is burning, the suspected cause, how many personnel are assigned, and links to official updates. The smoke layer shows NOAA satellite smoke detections, shaded light to heavy. Find fires near me uses your location, or a town you pick, to list the closest active fires with distance and direction. And if you want to see which fires are least controlled instead of which are biggest, switch the coloring to containment.
Where the data comes from
Fire locations, sizes, and containment percentages come from the National Interagency Fire Center’s WFIGS system, the same federal feed used by incident management teams and newsrooms. Agencies typically update it several times a day during active fires. This page pulls a fresh copy every time it loads and re-checks every ten minutes while you have it open.
One term worth defining: containment is the percentage of a fire’s edge that crews have secured behind a control line. It is not the percentage that has stopped burning, so a fire at 90 percent containment can still be very active inside that line. Fully contained fires are hidden from this map. Brand-new starts can take a few hours to reach the federal feed, so if you have heard about a fire that is not shown yet, check your county sheriff’s alerts and [InciWeb].
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Common questions
Q: How current is this map?
A: It fetches live federal data on every page load and re-checks every ten minutes while open. The “data updated” line at the top shows when a fire agency last updated any fire shown.
Q: Why isn't a fire I heard about on the map?
A: It is usually one of three reasons:
- It is fully contained,
- It is brand new and has not reached the federal feed yet, or
- It is outside Colorado.
For breaking starts, your county sheriff’s alerts and InciWeb are faster than any map.
Q: Does smoke on the map mean the air is bad where I am?
A: Not necessarily. The smoke layer shows satellite detections, and that smoke can be high in the atmosphere. For ground-level air quality, check AirNow.
Q: Can I use this map to make evacuation decisions?
A: No. For evacuation decisions, use your county’s official emergency alerts only. This map is for orientation and trip planning.
Q: Can I cite or embed this tracker?
A: Yes. Newsrooms and bloggers are welcome to link to or cite this page with credit to The Next Summit. If you would like to embed the map itself, email me at alexderr@thenextsummit.org.
