Colorado Fire Map: Track Colorado Wildfires Live in 2026

A live Colorado fire map fuses official NIFC incident records and perimeters, NASA satellite heat detections and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts into one view of the state. This page explains what those layers mean in Colorado, when the state burns, and how to follow an incident.

What does a Colorado fire map show right now?

A Colorado fire map shows four separate things at once: incidents reported by agencies to the national interagency system, mapped fire perimeters, satellite thermal detections, and active National Weather Service fire-weather alerts. Each layer updates on its own schedule, so reading them together matters more than reading any one of them.

Incident records carry the numbers people quote: fire name, acres, percent contained, incident type and the managing organization. They are authoritative but not instant, because they change when an agency files an update rather than when the fire moves.

Satellite detections move faster. NASA's MODIS and VIIRS instruments and NOAA's GOES satellites report heat within minutes to a few hours, which is why a new start in the Colorado high country often appears as a cluster of hotspots before any agency has named it. On the live map, each detection carries a fire probability tier that blends whether an official record is linked, how fresh the perimeter is, and how recent the satellite heat is.

When is Colorado's wildfire season?

Colorado no longer has a fire season with clean edges. The state's own record makes the point: the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control reports that all 20 of Colorado's largest wildfires have occurred since 2002, and the single most destructive fire in state history started on December 30, 2021.

In practice, the busiest stretch runs from late May through October, with two distinct peaks. Early summer brings wind-driven starts before the North American Monsoon arrives, and late summer brings lightning fires after dry storms cross the Western Slope.

In 2025, federal and state reporting agencies logged 1,123 wildfires in Colorado that burned 255,968 acres, according to the National Interagency Coordination Center annual report. Lightning caused fewer than half of those fires but 209,688 of the acres.

Winter and early spring are quieter but not safe. Grass on the Front Range cures over the winter, and a downslope windstorm can move fire through it at any point between October and April.

Which agencies fight wildfires in Colorado?

The Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control, part of the Colorado Department of Public Safety, is the state's wildland fire agency. Its Wildland Fire Management section runs state aviation and ground resources, the Colorado Wildfire Information Management System, and a weekly Fire Environment and Weather Brief prepared by its Fire Intelligence Unit.

Above the state level sits the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center, based in Lakewood, which mobilizes crews, aircraft and incident management teams across the geographic area and publishes the preparedness level you often see quoted during a busy week.

Federal land managers carry much of Colorado's fire load directly. In 2025 the Bureau of Land Management reported 116,568 acres burned in Colorado and the Forest Service 41,605 acres, while fires under county, state and local protection accounted for 81,784 acres.

State agency

Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control (DFPC), Lakewood

Geographic coordination

Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center (RMACC)

Fire-weather forecasts

NWS Boulder, NWS Pueblo and NWS Grand Junction

Evacuation authority

County sheriffs and local emergency managers

Where do Colorado wildfires usually burn?

Colorado burns in three different landscapes, and the fires behave nothing alike. The Western Slope carries pinyon-juniper, sagebrush and mixed conifer, and produced the Pine Gulch and Lee fires. The Front Range foothills mix ponderosa pine with dense subdivisions. The eastern plains carry grass that can run for miles in a single afternoon.

That mix explains why acreage and destruction rank differently. The largest Colorado fires by acreage burned mostly in forest and rangeland, while the most destructive fires by homes lost burned where fuel met neighborhoods.

The 2025 season followed the same pattern. A dry lightning event on July 10 started the South Rim and Turner Gulch fires on the Western Slope, and the Lee Fire in Rio Blanco County grew to become the fifth-largest wildfire in state history.

What are Colorado's largest wildfires on record?

Colorado's record book is recent. DFPC's historical wildfire page reports that 17 of the top 20 largest fires have occurred since 2012 and six of the top 20 since 2020, with four of the top five burning in either 2020 or 2025.

Acreage is only half the story. DFPC keeps a separate ranking by homes lost, and it is led by a fire that does not appear in the acreage top 20 at all.

The 2020 season is the reason four of those entries share a year. NOAA's satellite service recorded the Cameron Peak Fire passing 256 square miles on October 14, 2020, making it the largest fire in Colorado's history, weeks after the Pine Gulch Fire had taken the same title from the 2002 Hayman Fire in August.

Why did the Marshall Fire burn in December?

The Marshall Fire destroyed 1,084 homes in Boulder County on December 30, 2021, in cured grass rather than timber. It is the clearest evidence that a Colorado fire map is worth checking outside summer.

No Red Flag Warning was in effect. According to NOAA Research, a warning was not issued because relative humidity did not fall below the National Weather Service's 15 percent threshold, which was established for warm-season wildfires; a high-wind warning was issued instead, and that warning triggered a county-wide burn ban.

Stan Benjamin, a CIRES scientist working at NOAA's Global Systems Laboratory and lead author of the study, told NOAA Research that the duration of the hurricane-force winds was likely the single most important factor in how the fire spread.

What weather drives Colorado fire danger?

Three ingredients drive Colorado fire danger: low relative humidity, sustained wind, and fuels dry enough for land managers to call critical. The National Weather Service issues Red Flag Warnings only when the weather and the fuels line up.

NWS Grand Junction, which covers western Colorado and part of eastern Utah, publishes its thresholds. Its primary Red Flag criteria are relative humidity of 15 percent or less combined with sustained winds or frequent gusts of 25 mph or greater, occurring simultaneously for at least three hours in a 12-hour period, or widely scattered dry thunderstorms with 15 percent or more coverage.

A Fire Weather Watch comes first, generally 24 to 72 hours ahead of expected red flag conditions, and the warning follows within 12 to 24 hours of the event. Contributing factors include the first significant lightning after a hot dry spell and dry cold-frontal passages that bring an abrupt wind shift.

How do evacuations work in Colorado?

Evacuations in Colorado are ordered by county sheriffs and local emergency managers, not by the state, and the wording has been deliberately standardized. The Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management publishes recommended evacuation terminology built around plain language.

DHSEM recommends phrases that carry the action inside them: "Evacuation Order - Leave Now" for an immediate threat, and "Pre Evacuation Issued - If you need extra time to leave or have animals you can leave now" for a preparatory notice. The terms are best practice rather than a state requirement.

Sign up for your county's alert system before you need it. A fire map tells you where the fire is; only your county can tell you that your address is being evacuated.

How do you read a Colorado fire map in 60 seconds?

A Colorado fire map answers one practical question fastest when you work through it in a fixed order. The sequence below takes under a minute and works during an active incident or a routine check.

1. Open the live fire map and filter to Colorado, or allow location access to see fires near you within a set distance in miles.
2. Look first for official perimeters. A drawn perimeter means an agency has mapped the fire and filed an incident record.
3. Open the largest incident near you and read acres, percent contained, incident type and the managing organization.
4. Check the timestamps: "Last NIFC update", "Last satellite heat" and "Last GOES heat" tell you how old each number really is.
5. Scan for NWS Red Flag Warnings and Fire Weather Watches over your county, since those change how fast an existing fire can move.
6. Check your county alert system and local news for the evacuation status of your own address.

The same routine works for neighboring states. If smoke is arriving from outside Colorado, check the Wyoming fire map and the Utah fire map before assuming the source is local, and see our guide to reading a live US wildfire map for the layer-by-layer detail.

What does wildfire smoke do to Colorado air?

Smoke is Colorado's most widely shared wildfire impact, and it routinely arrives from fires in other states. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment publishes a Colorado Smoke Outlook, air quality advisories and a smoke blog alongside its monitoring network.

Smoke concentrations are reported through the EPA Air Quality Index, which uses six color-coded categories. An AQI value of 100 corresponds roughly to the level of the short-term national ambient air quality standard for a pollutant.

Colorado's terrain complicates the picture. Smoke settles into valleys and the Front Range urban corridor overnight and lifts during the day, so a mountain town can record worse air than a city 60 miles closer to the fire. Our smoke and air quality guide covers how those overlays are built.

Frequently asked questions about the Colorado fire map