Kentucky Fire Map: Track Kentucky Wildfires Live in 2026

A Kentucky fire map is mostly a fall-season tool: the state's worst wildfire years happen in the Appalachian autumn, when leaf drop and drought combine in the eastern mountains. Kentucky averages 850 to 1,000 wildfires a year, and the Division of Forestry says 99 percent are human-caused.

What does a Kentucky fire map show right now?

A Kentucky fire map fuses official NIFC incident records and interagency WFIGS perimeters, NASA VIIRS and MODIS thermal detections, NOAA GOES heat detections and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts into one live view. US Wildfire Tracker shows all four free in any browser, refreshing automatically every few minutes while the tab stays open.

Kentucky's wildfire count swings hard by year. The state's own ten-year record runs from a low of 360 fires in 2018 to 1,246 fires in 2022, and from 7,907 acres in 2020 to 71,159 acres in 2016 — nearly a tenfold range depending on how dry the fall gets in the eastern mountains.

US Wildfire Tracker scores each detection on whether an official NIFC record is linked, how fresh the perimeter is and how recent the satellite heat is, and hides weak signals below 25 percent probability by default — useful in a state where arson, not lightning, is the single leading cause of wildfire.

When is Kentucky's wildfire season?

Kentucky has two statutory fire hazard seasons: spring, February 15 through April 30, and fall, October 1 through December 15. The fall season is the more dangerous of the two in the eastern mountains, where leaf drop opens the canopy just as drought typically deepens.

"The Division of Forestry is preparing for a busy wildfire hazard season. Our firefighters are trained and ready to quickly and safely respond to wildfires when they occur," said Brandon Howard, Division Director and State Forester, ahead of the 2025 fall season. Governor Andy Beshear added: "It's so important this fall that we do what we can to protect Kentucky and our people."

That fall pattern is shared with neighboring Appalachian states. Our North Carolina fire map guide describes the same October–November mountain fire risk, and the fire tracker guide covers how fire seasons differ region by region across the country.

Which agencies fight wildfires in Kentucky?

The Kentucky Division of Forestry, part of the Energy and Environment Cabinet, is the lead wildland firefighting agency on private land statewide, enforcing the state's fire hazard seasons and outdoor burning rules alongside suppression.

Kentucky's wildfire dispatch and coordination runs through the Kentucky Interagency Coordination Center, hosted at the Daniel Boone National Forest Supervisor's Office, which operates within NIFC's Southern Area Coordination Center — the same interagency network that covers the rest of the Southeast, not the Eastern Area. Cooperating agencies include the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Weather Service.

Kentucky Emergency Management coordinates the broader disaster response when a wildfire threatens communities at scale, working through area offices and county judge-executives, as it did during the November 2016 outbreak.

Where do Kentucky wildfires usually burn?

Eastern Kentucky carries almost all of the state's serious wildfire risk. The Division of Forestry's own seasonal district structure concentrates its spring and fall staffing in the Eastern, Kentucky River, Northeastern and Southeastern districts — the coal-country counties of steep, forested hollows where homes sit close to the tree line along narrow roads.

That terrain both drives fire behavior and complicates fighting it: steep slopes carry fire uphill quickly, ridgelines funnel wind, and access for engines is often limited to a single road per hollow. Middle and western Kentucky see far fewer and smaller fires, mostly tied to debris burning rather than the arson that dominates the eastern statistics.

What happened in Kentucky's November 2016 fire season?

November 2016 produced Kentucky's worst wildfire season on record, concurrent with the same regional drought that drove the Gatlinburg, Tennessee fires. As many as 41 wildfires burned simultaneously across eastern Kentucky at the outbreak's peak, concentrated in the southeast.

Rainfall deficits of 4 to 6 inches pushed severe-to-extreme drought across all 33 eastern Kentucky counties by mid-to-late November, in what the National Weather Service recorded as one of the warmest and driest autumns on record for the region. The largest single named fire, on Pine Mountain in Harlan County, burned 7,400 acres.

Nearly 500 personnel responded to the 2016 outbreak, drawn from the Division of Forestry, the Kentucky Fire Commission, Natural Resource Conservation Services, the Kentucky National Guard and the American Red Cross. The Guard flew six UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters with 600-gallon water buckets and two LUH-72 Lakotas, dropping nearly 2 million gallons of water over roughly 50,000 acres of active fire.

For national scale, NIFC recorded 77,850 wildfires and 5,131,474 acres across the entire United States in 2025 — Kentucky's 2016 season alone burned more acres than the state records in most full years combined with the next several years after it.

How does Kentucky's outdoor burning law work?

Kentucky's outdoor burning rule, cited by the Division of Forestry as KRS 149.400, makes it illegal during the spring and fall fire hazard seasons to burn anything within 150 feet of woodland or brushland between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. — burning is permitted only in the evening and overnight hours, 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., when humidity typically rises and wind typically calms.

That is a different rule from the "4 PM law" used in some neighboring states: Kentucky restricts burning to a nighttime window rather than allowing it only after 4 p.m. Open burning of anything other than natural plant matter is separately regulated under state air quality rules, and burning garbage or construction debris is prohibited outright.

Debris fires that escape containment are the Division of Forestry's second leading cause of wildfire after arson, which is why the seasonal 150-foot, daytime restriction exists in the first place — it targets exactly the hours when a burn pile is most likely to be left unattended and catch wind.

What weather drives Kentucky fire danger?

Six National Weather Service offices touch Kentucky's borders and issue fire weather guidance for parts of the state: Louisville, Jackson, and Paducah inside Kentucky, plus Charleston (West Virginia), Wilmington (Ohio) and Morristown (Tennessee) for counties near those state lines.

Humidity

Relative humidity of 25 percent or less.

Fuel moisture

10-hour fuel moisture of 8 percent or less.

Wind

Sustained wind of 15 mph or greater, occurring together with the humidity and fuel moisture criteria.

That combination — dry fuel, low humidity and wind — is exactly what turned scattered ignitions into the 41-fire outbreak of November 2016, on top of drought that had already pushed fuel moisture far below normal across the eastern mountains.

How do evacuations work in Kentucky?

Kentucky does not publish a standardized statewide evacuation-level system for wildfire. Evacuation instructions and road closures are issued locally, by county judge-executives and sheriffs working with Kentucky Emergency Management's area offices and the Division of Forestry.

During the November 2016 outbreak, that local coordination played out as road closures rather than mass evacuation orders: Kentucky Highway 1679 (Little Shepherds Trail) in Harlan County was closed to all but emergency traffic, and a stretch of the Red River Gorge in the Daniel Boone National Forest was closed along Tunnel Ridge Road.

In practice, county emergency management channels and local news are the authoritative source during an active fire. A live fire map is a situational-awareness tool for deciding whether to pay closer attention — not a substitute for an official evacuation order or road closure notice.

How do you read a Kentucky fire map fast?

In Kentucky the recurring question is whether fall drought has reached the point where a normal debris fire or arson ignition can behave like the fires of November 2016.

1. Open the live fire map and filter to Kentucky, or use "fires near me" to list incidents within a set distance in miles of your location.
2. Check the probability tier first. A low-confidence detection with no NIFC record attached is often a permitted nighttime burn rather than an active wildfire.
3. Open the fire and compare "Last NIFC update," "Last satellite heat" and "Last GOES heat" — eastern Kentucky's steep terrain can hide a fire's true extent from a single vantage point.
4. Check acres and containment together, and note whether the fire sits in the eastern mountains, where most of the state's serious fire activity concentrates.
5. Look for a Red Flag Warning polygon, and check for smoke-related road closures near mountain routes before you travel.
6. For evacuation or road-closure status, go to your county emergency management channel, and use the directions-away links if you need to leave.

Our fire tracker guide explains the latency behind each data layer in detail, and the forest fire smoke tracker guide covers what to do when smoke reduces visibility before a fire is confirmed nearby.

What does wildfire smoke do to Kentucky air quality?

Smoke from Kentucky wildfires is measured on the same EPA Air Quality Index used nationwide. During the November 2016 outbreak, dense smoke reduced visibility enough on the Mountain Parkway to contribute to a fatal 12-vehicle pileup — a reminder that smoke can be dangerous on roadways well before it registers as a health warning on the AQI scale.

Eastern Kentucky's valleys and hollows can trap smoke overnight even after fire activity slows, which is why local officials treat visibility on mountain roads as its own hazard during an active fall fire season, separate from the fire itself.

FAQ about the Kentucky fire map