Idaho Fire Map: Track Idaho Wildfires Live in 2026

A live Idaho fire map brings official incident records and perimeters together with NASA and NOAA satellite heat detections and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts, so you can follow rangeland fires on the Snake River Plain and timber fires in the Panhandle at the same time.

What does an Idaho fire map show right now?

An Idaho fire map layers four public feeds over one basemap: official incident records from the National Interagency Fire Center, mapped fire perimeters, satellite thermal detections from NASA's VIIRS and MODIS instruments and NOAA's geostationary GOES analysis, and active National Weather Service fire-weather alerts.

Satellite heat is the fast layer. Polar-orbiting passes cross Idaho several times a day and the geostationary analysis fills the gaps, so a fresh thermal signal with no matching incident record usually means a start that has not reached a dispatch record yet — common in the Frank Church wilderness country where roads are scarce.

US Wildfire Tracker fuses those feeds on its free live fire map and attaches a fire probability tier to every detection, blending whether an official record is linked, how fresh the perimeter is and how recent the heat is. Weak signals below 25 percent stay hidden by default because they often reflect prescribed burns or industrial heat.

When is Idaho's closed fire season?

Idaho runs a legally defined closed fire season rather than an informal one. Valley County's fire warden office states the rule plainly: "The period from May 10th to October 20th of each year, has been designated as the closed season for fires in the state of Idaho."

Inside that window a burn permit is required. The same guidance notes that during the closed season "it is unlawful for any person to set, or cause to be set, a fire without first having obtained a Burn Permit," available from the local protective district fire warden or the state burn permit website. Campfires are the exception unless critical fire danger closes them too.

Large-fire activity peaks later than the permit season starts. Southern Idaho rangeland typically becomes receptive in late June once cheatgrass cures, while the mountain timber of central and northern Idaho reaches its driest point between late July and mid-September.

Which agencies fight wildfires in Idaho?

Idaho's wildfire response is unusually federal. The Bureau of Land Management describes its Idaho operation as "one of the largest and most complex fire programs in the BLM, protecting approximately 11 million acres of range and forest land in central and southern Idaho and employing nearly 500 people."

That program alone responds to an average of 330 fires burning about 270,000 acres a year, with roughly 50 fire engines, two helicopters, four single engine air tankers, 11 bulldozers, an interagency hotshot crew and four interagency dispatch centers.

The Idaho Department of Lands runs the state program. IDL describes its fire arm as working "in partnership with two Timber Protection Associations and with the support of rural volunteer fire departments and other partners" and as "responsible for fire suppression and prevention on more than 9 million acres of state, private and federal land in Idaho," organized into 12 forest protective districts.

The state's stated tactical goal is aggressive initial attack. IDL says its fire program "focuses on initial attack with the goal of keeping fires at 10 acres or less," a standard that matters because the endowment timber it protects funds Idaho schools.

Rangeland Fire Protection Associations fill the gap on open country. IDL describes them as "nonprofit volunteer firefighting organizations made up of local farmers, ranchers, and landowners," and reports that Idaho's ten RFPAs "protect a combined 9.3 million acres of private, state and federal rangeland." Idaho's first was formed in 2012.

Why is Idaho split between two fire regions?

Idaho is the only state in the Northwest whose wildfire coordination is split between two of the country's ten geographic areas. Northern Idaho belongs to the Northern Rockies geographic area, and southern Idaho belongs to the Great Basin.

The Northern Rockies Coordination Center in Missoula describes its boundary as covering "the States of Montana, North Dakota, and northern Idaho, Yellowstone National Park, and a small portion of South Dakota." The Idaho Department of Lands is listed among its primary cooperating agencies.

The Great Basin Coordination Center in Salt Lake City draws the other half of the line, stating that its geographic area "encompasses Utah, Nevada, Idaho-south of the Salmon River, the western Wyoming mountains and the Arizona Strip." Its Idaho zone centers are Boise, Central Idaho, Eastern Idaho, Payette and South Idaho.

This matters when you read a map. Two adjacent fires can be managed under different coordinating groups with different resource queues, which is one reason containment percentages on either side of the Salmon River can move at very different speeds. Neighbouring Montana sits entirely inside the Northern Rockies area.

Where do Idaho wildfires usually burn?

Idaho burns in two very different landscapes. Southern Idaho's Snake River Plain and Owyhee country is sagebrush and grass, where wind-driven fires cover enormous ground quickly. Central and northern Idaho is mountain timber, where fires burn longer and are harder to reach.

Access shapes outcomes as much as fuel does. Central Idaho contains some of the largest roadless country in the lower 48, so a lightning start there may burn for days before crews can reach it, while a rangeland start near Interstate 84 draws engines within minutes.

BLM's fuels program reflects that reality, treating more than 100,000 acres a year with mechanical thinning, prescribed fire, seeding and fuel breaks intended to give suppression crews a place to stop a running rangeland fire.

The cause split is the part to notice. In 2024 human starts were 819 of Idaho's 1,450 fires but only about 70,500 of the 996,762 acres, because lightning fires start in country crews cannot reach quickly. NICC cautions that its figures come from the Sit/209 application and "may not reflect final official figures."

What are the largest Idaho wildfires ever?

Idaho's defining fire is the Great Fire of 1910, the event that burned across the Panhandle and into western Montana in a single August. Modern Idaho megafires are smaller but still enormous by national standards, and most of them burn in the southern rangeland or the central mountains.

Two of those entries show how fast rangeland fire moves. NASA recorded that the Long Butte fire "burned over 200,000 acres in a single day" on August 23, 2010, while the Wapiti Fire took more than three months to reach a smaller total in steep, roadless mountain terrain.

What weather drives Idaho fire danger?

Idaho's worst fire days combine strong wind, very low relative humidity and fuels already cured by summer heat. When the National Weather Service expects those to coincide, it issues a Red Flag Warning for the affected fire-weather zones.

The NWS defines a Red Flag Warning as an alert issued "in conjunction with land management agencies, to alert land managers to an ongoing or imminent critical fire weather pattern," used when conditions are occurring or expected shortly. A Fire Weather Watch is the earlier stage, meaning critical conditions are "possible but not imminent or occurring."

Three forecast offices split the state: Boise for southwest Idaho, Pocatello for the southeast and Spokane for the Panhandle. Their fire-weather zones follow terrain rather than county lines, so a warning can cover a valley floor while the ridge above it stays out.

Dry lightning is the other driver. A single storm crossing the Salmon River country can leave dozens of holdover starts smouldering in timber, which is why the number of incidents on a map can climb for days after the storm has passed.

How do evacuations work in Idaho?

Idaho standardized its wildfire evacuation language in 2026. Teton County Emergency Management states that "The State of Idaho is adopting the 'Ready, Set, Go' wildfire evacuation program as the statewide standard for public evacuation messaging, establishing a unified, consistent approach to communicating evacuation risk and action levels across all jurisdictions."

Before that, counties used different systems. Reporting on the change quoted officials describing a patchwork in which some counties used "3-2-1" and others used red, yellow and green, which meant the same warning could mean different things one county line apart.

Authority did not change with the vocabulary. Teton County notes that the messaging "aligns with the statutory authority of Idaho's county sheriffs, who retain responsibility for issuing evacuation orders within their respective counties." Older Level 1, 2 and 3 phrasing still appears in some North Idaho reporting and maps onto Ready, Set and Go respectively.

How do you read an Idaho fire map fast?

Checking Idaho fire activity should take under a minute. This sequence works on the live map or in the Chrome side panel, and it puts proximity ahead of headline acreage.

1. Open the map and filter to Idaho, or allow location access to see only fires within a set distance in miles of where you are.
2. Read the fire probability tier before the acreage. Weak signals below 25 percent are hidden by default because they often reflect prescribed burns or industrial heat.
3. Open the nearest incident and compare three timestamps: last NIFC update, last satellite heat and last GOES heat. Fresh heat under an old perimeter means the fire is still moving.
4. Check whether a Red Flag Warning polygon covers your area, since that changes how quickly conditions can deteriorate.
5. Confirm evacuation status with your county sheriff or emergency management office, then use the directions-away links if you need to move.

Our fire tracker guide explains how each data layer is produced, and the fires near me walkthrough covers the proximity workflow in detail.

What does wildfire smoke do to Idaho air?

Smoke reaches far more Idahoans than fire does. The state's north-south valleys act as smoke traps: the Treasure Valley, the Palouse and the Panhandle lakes country all collect smoke under late-summer inversions, sometimes from fires hundreds of miles away in Washington, Oregon or British Columbia.

Air quality is reported on the Air Quality Index. The EPA describes it as six color-coded categories, noting that for each pollutant "an AQI value of 100 generally corresponds to an ambient air concentration that equals the level of the short-term national ambient air quality standard for protection of public health."

The state runs a formal response for those episodes. Idaho DEQ says that when wildfire smoke threatens the state it implements the Wildfire Smoke Event Response Protocol, coordinating with health districts, five tribes, federal agencies and the neighbouring Montana, Oregon and Washington air agencies, and that it "provides a smoke forecast when wildfire smoke impacts Idaho."

DEQ's monitoring network backs that up with instruments "at more than 30 sites statewide," and its data flows hourly to EPA's AirNow. A clear local fire map can still coincide with hazardous air, because the plume that matters may have travelled from another state. Our smoke tracking guide explains how to read plume forecasts against ground monitor readings.

Frequently asked questions about the Idaho fire map