Arkansas Fire Map: Track Arkansas Wildfires Live in 2026

An Arkansas fire map has to track a state that logs well over a thousand wildfires most years, runs on debris burning as its leading cause, and in September 2026 had every one of its 75 counties under a burn ban during a flash drought. Here is how to read one correctly.

What does an Arkansas fire map show right now?

An Arkansas fire map fuses official NIFC incident records and interagency WFIGS perimeters with NASA VIIRS and MODIS satellite heat, NOAA GOES thermal detections and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts. US Wildfire Tracker renders all four free in any browser, refreshing automatically every few minutes while the tab stays open.

Arkansas's biggest reading problem is separating legal fire from unwanted fire. The Arkansas Department of Agriculture's Forestry Division protects more than 15 million acres of non-federal forestland with 175 wildland firefighters and 110 bulldozers, and much of the heat satellites see on any given day is a permitted agricultural, land-clearing or prescribed burn rather than an escaped wildfire.

US Wildfire Tracker handles that by scoring each detection: whether an official NIFC record is linked, how fresh the perimeter is, and how recent the VIIRS, MODIS or GOES heat is. Weak signals below 25 percent probability are hidden by default, and the app warns explicitly that hotspots can reflect prescribed burns or industrial heat, which matters most in a state where county burn bans change week to week.

When is Arkansas's wildfire season?

Arkansas's official fire weather season runs from October 1 through April 30, a 212-day window defined in the National Weather Service's Arkansas Fire Weather Operating Plan, timed to the months when dormant fuels and drought create the most danger and when most prescribed burning happens.

March is usually the sharpest peak. In March 2025 the state logged roughly 425 wildfires burning 17,657 acres in that month alone, including 96 separate fires on March 19 as winds topped 50 mph, the most wildfire activity Arkansas had recorded in nearly 40 years for that time of year.

2026 broke that seasonal pattern. A rapid-onset flash drought pushed much of Arkansas back into extreme drought by late summer, and Arkansas's spring 2026 fire season alone burned roughly 25,000 acres before the state moved into an unusual late-summer wildfire push that put every county under a burn ban by September 8, 2026.

That variability is worth comparing against neighboring states. Our Oklahoma fire map guide and Texas fire map guide describe similarly drought-driven seasons just across the state line, and the general mechanics of tracking any state's fire calendar are covered in our wildfire tracking guide.

Which agencies fight fires in Arkansas?

The Arkansas Department of Agriculture's Forestry Division is the state's wildland fire agency. It runs suppression with engines and bulldozers, issues burn notifications, dispatches through a 24-hour center in Malvern, and operates seven wildfire protection districts covering the state's non-federal forestland.

Above the state level, the Southern Area Coordination Center and the Arkansas-Oklahoma Interagency Coordination Center in Hot Springs mobilize crews, aircraft and incident meteorologists across the region when a fire outgrows local resources, and can call in a certified Incident Meteorologist stationed at the National Weather Service office in Little Rock.

County government carries real authority too. Arkansas burn bans are issued county by county, either by the county judge or by the Forestry Division for regional orders, and county sheriffs and emergency management offices handle evacuation decisions during an active fire.

Where do Arkansas wildfires usually burn?

The heaviest wildfire acreage burns in the pine forests of south and central Arkansas and across the Ouachita and Ozark-St. Francis National Forests, where working timberland, hunting-season land-clearing and agricultural burning intersect with dormant hardwood leaf litter every fall and spring.

Northwest Arkansas's Ozark uplands burn differently: steeper terrain, more hardwood forest, and fires that threaten mountain homes rather than industrial pine stands. The National Weather Service redrew its Ozark and Ouachita fire weather zones in April 2022 around the 1,500-foot elevation contour specifically because higher terrain there behaves differently in a Red Flag event.

2025 and 2026 both produced outbreaks worth naming. The March 2025 wind event concentrated damage in Saline County and central Arkansas, while the August 2026 Pine Tree Road Fire burned roughly 2,000 acres in Union County in south Arkansas and forced the evacuation of about 150 residents before Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency.

What are the largest wildfire outbreaks in Arkansas history?

Arkansas's fire record is shaped less by any single giant blaze than by outbreak months, when dozens of fires ignite across the state within days of each other under wind-driven, low-humidity conditions. March 1965 still stands as the reference point, with about 113,000 acres burned statewide in that single month.

For national context, NIFC's own table shows 77,850 wildfires and 5,131,474 acres burned across the United States in 2025. Arkansas's worst years land in the tens of thousands of acres, not millions, but the state's fire count in an active month can rival what some western states see all season.

What weather drives Arkansas fire danger?

The Arkansas Fire Weather Operating Plan, jointly maintained by the five National Weather Service offices with fire responsibility in the state, sets Red Flag Warning criteria that vary by office. For most of Arkansas, covered by the Little Rock office, all three of the following must be forecast together: afternoon relative humidity of 25 percent or lower, 20-foot sustained winds of 14 mph or greater, and 10-hour fuel moisture under 10 percent.

Criteria differ at the edges of the state. The Memphis office, covering northeast Arkansas, issues a Red Flag Warning on just the humidity and wind thresholds; Shreveport, covering the southwest, requires stronger winds of 20 to 25 mph depending on station type; and Jackson, Mississippi, which covers Ashley and Chicot counties in the southeast corner, adds a Keetch-Byram Drought Index above 700, a near-maximum drought reading on the index's 0-to-800 scale.

Drought is the multiplier behind all of it. By early September 2026, persistent drought and extremely dry vegetation had pushed every Arkansas county to high wildfire risk, according to the Department of Agriculture, which said conditions let fires ignite easily, spread quickly and become difficult to control. State Forester Kyle Cunningham has pointed to the same pattern behind individual outbreaks: "Conditions are dry with low humidity statewide, and we are forecasted to experience periods of high winds in the coming days."

Why does debris burning drive Arkansas's fire problem?

Human activity starts the overwhelming majority of Arkansas wildfires. The state's Fire Weather Operating Plan puts the national and Arkansas-relevant split at roughly 90 percent human-caused and 10 percent lightning-caused, and field burning, yard debris and land-clearing piles are consistently the largest single source among those human causes.

State rules reflect that. Arkansas law requires notifying the Forestry Division before burning forest vegetation or land-clearing debris weighing a ton or more, even outside a burn ban, and the Forestry Division's general guidance is to burn only between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., and only when relative humidity is above 25 percent — almost exactly the threshold that also triggers a Red Flag Warning.

Planned fire is managed far more formally on the Ouachita and Ozark-St. Francis National Forests. Under the region's prescribed fire implementation guide, no unit may be ignited when on-site humidity is below 25 percent without regional-level approval, and forecast 20-foot winds above 20 mph require a variance request with a documented fire-behavior run before a burn boss can proceed.

How do evacuations work in Arkansas?

Arkansas has no statewide Ready-Set-Go or numbered evacuation-level system. Evacuation orders and voluntary evacuation requests come from the county sheriff's office and county emergency management agency covering the fire, and instructions can vary street by street, as they did along Lawson Road and Nick Springs Road during the 2026 Union County wildfire.

When a fire outgrows local capacity, the state can step in through Arkansas's Governor's Disaster Response and Recovery Fund. Executive Order 26-13, signed by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders on August 21, 2026, declared a state of emergency for wildfires that began the day before and released $250,000 in disaster funds after the Pine Tree Road Fire in Union County burned roughly 2,000 acres and prompted the evacuation of about 150 residents.

The Assistant State Forester for Fire Protection has also linked evacuation planning directly to prevention. After Arkansas's March 2025 outbreak, Robert Murphy said the state came close to a historic bad month, adding that firefighters hoped never to see conditions reach the state's all-time March record.

How do you track Arkansas fires in under a minute?

The Arkansas workflow is about separating a permitted burn from an unplanned one, and about checking county-level rules that change from week to week.

1. Open the live fire map and filter to Arkansas, or use "fires near me" to list incidents within a set distance in miles of your location.
2. Read the probability tier first. A low-confidence detection with no NIFC record attached, especially outside a burn ban, is often a permitted field or land-clearing burn.
3. Compare "Last NIFC update", "Last satellite heat" and "Last GOES heat". Fresh heat against a stale official record means conditions are moving faster than the paperwork.
4. Check acres against containment together, not acreage alone; a wind-driven Arkansas fire can jump containment percentages quickly once crews get ahead of it.
5. Look for a Red Flag Warning polygon over the same ground, and check which of the five National Weather Service offices covers that county, since criteria differ.
6. For county burn-ban status and evacuation instructions, go to your county judge's office or sheriff, and use the directions-away links if you need to leave.

The general mechanics behind those layers, including how often each feed updates, are covered in our fire tracker guide. If a fire sits near your county line, our Georgia fire map guide shows the same cross-office Red Flag complexity from a different southeastern state.

What does wildfire smoke do to Arkansas air quality?

Arkansas's fire weather forecasters already track smoke as a planning problem separate from fire danger. The Arkansas Fire Weather Operating Plan requires a minimum mixing height of 1,700 feet before land managers can ignite a prescribed burn under Clean Air Act guidelines, and heavy smoke concentrations have been observed up to 40 miles downwind when mixing heights stay low and transport winds exceed 15 mph.

For residents, the EPA's Air Quality Index translates that into a health scale: 0 to 50 is good, 101 to 150 means sensitive groups may be affected, and 201 to 300 is a health alert where risk increases for everyone. During an active outbreak like March 2025 or the 2026 drought season, smoke from dozens of simultaneous fires and permitted burns can push nearby counties into the unhealthy-for-sensitive-groups range even without a single large fire nearby.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Arkansas Fire Map