Nevada Fire Map: Track Nevada Wildfires Live in 2026

A live Nevada fire map merges official NIFC incident records and perimeters, NASA satellite heat detections and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts into a single view. This page explains Nevada's rangeland fire season, its agencies, its largest fires, and why cheatgrass drives the numbers.

What does a Nevada fire map show right now?

A Nevada fire map draws four separate feeds at once: agency incident records, mapped perimeters, satellite thermal detections and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts. Each refreshes on its own clock, and in Nevada the gap between them is often the whole story.

Incident records carry the official numbers: fire name, acres, percent contained, incident type and managing organization. They update when an agency files, not when the fire moves, which in fast rangeland fuels can mean a figure is hours behind reality.

Satellite detections close that gap. NASA's MODIS and VIIRS instruments and NOAA's GOES satellites report heat within minutes to a few hours, and in a state where most fires burn far from roads that is frequently the first signal anyone has. On the live map, each detection carries a probability tier that reflects whether an official record is linked and how fresh the heat and perimeter are.

When is Nevada's wildfire season?

Nevada's season is a rangeland season, not a forest season. Activity builds as cheatgrass and other annual grasses cure in early summer, peaks with dry lightning in July and August, and ends with autumn rain rather than a fixed date.

The 2025 pattern was typical. The National Interagency Coordination Center recorded smaller dry lightning events affecting northern Nevada on August 2, and Fuels and Fire Behavior Advisories were issued for parts of Nevada during the first half of July on the basis of abnormally dry fuels and above-normal fine fuel loading.

Statewide, reporting agencies logged 568 wildfires and 250,804 acres in Nevada in 2025, against 929 fires and 70,410 acres in 2024. The Nevada Division of Forestry separately reports responding to 93 fires covering approximately 370,370 acres in 2025.

The split matters more than the totals. In 2025 lightning caused fewer than half of Nevada's fires but 218,264 of the acres, because lightning starts in country where crews take hours to arrive.

Which agencies fight wildfires in Nevada?

The Nevada Division of Forestry is the state wildland fire agency, led by the State Forester and Firewarden and headquartered in Carson City. Its Wildland Fire Protection Program provides financial assistance, suppression resources and incident management support to participating fire protection districts.

Most of Nevada is federal, so the Bureau of Land Management carries the largest share. BLM Nevada Fire and Aviation manages approximately 48 million acres of public land and, apart from Alaska, runs the largest fire and aviation program in the bureau, with district offices in Elko, Winnemucca, Carson City, Ely, Las Vegas and Battle Mountain.

Dispatch runs through the Great Basin Coordination Center, whose Nevada centers are Central Nevada, Elko, Ely, Las Vegas and Sierra Front. Those names appear on incident records, and knowing which one covers your area tells you which dispatch phone line is the authoritative source.

Where do Nevada wildfires usually burn?

Nevada burns in sagebrush steppe and desert basin, mostly in the north. Humboldt County alone has the highest incidence of wildfire in the state, with 941 ignitions and 1,374,499 acres burned between 2003 and 2022, according to its community wildfire protection plan.

That geography explains why Nevada acreage totals swing so violently between years. A single wind-driven run through continuous fine fuel can add more acres in a day than an entire quiet season produces.

Population is concentrated in two corners, around Reno and Las Vegas, so most Nevada fires threaten rangeland, ranching operations and sage-grouse habitat rather than dense subdivisions. That does not make them minor: the Great Basin's ecological losses accumulate fire by fire.

How does cheatgrass drive the Great Basin fire cycle?

Cheatgrass is the mechanism behind Nevada's fire statistics. Based on satellite imagery from 2003, about 11 million of the almost 48 million acres of BLM Nevada lands had at least 10 percent cover of cheatgrass and other annual grasses, and the bureau notes that when such areas burn the cheatgrass is released, greatly increasing in coverage and initiating a cheatgrass fire cycle.

The US Geological Survey describes the same loop: cheatgrass cures earlier than native grasses, provides continuous fine fuel, and reduces or eliminates the chance for native sagebrush to recover after fire, so each burn makes the next one more likely.

Fire managers are explicit about the threat. "We are taking this action because of the threat annual invasive grasses, specifically cheatgrass, play in altering fire regime conditions that intensify wildland fire frequency, duration and size," said Jon Raby, BLM Nevada State Director, announcing an environmental assessment for targeted grazing.

The consequences reach wildlife. "Greater sage-grouse population persistence may be compromised as sagebrush ecosystems and sage-grouse habitat become more impacted by fire and a changing climate," said Peter Coates, a research scientist with the USGS Western Ecological Research Center. The same dynamic drives fires on the Utah fire map across the state line.

What are Nevada's largest wildfires on record?

Nevada's biggest recorded fire is the 2018 Martin Fire. The Bureau of Land Management reported that as of 6 a.m. on July 14, 2018, the burned acreage was 435,569 with 95 percent containment; the fire had been reported at about 12:25 a.m. on July 5 roughly four miles northeast of Paradise Valley and was managed by the Winnemucca District.

Nevada's forestry agency does not publish an all-time ranked list of state fires that we could verify, so this table reports only fires whose acreage appears in a federal source. The 2025 entries come from the National Interagency Coordination Center's large-fire tables.

Scale is easier to see at county level. Humboldt County's 1,374,499 acres burned over 20 years is roughly three times the size of the Martin Fire, spread across nearly a thousand separate ignitions.

What weather drives Nevada fire danger?

Nevada fire danger comes from three things happening together: cured fine fuel, wind, and very low relative humidity. Dry thunderstorms add a fourth, delivering lightning without enough rain to matter.

National Weather Service offices in Reno, Elko and Las Vegas issue Nevada fire-weather products under Great Basin coordination. That agreement requires the fuels half of the test as well as the weather half: fuels count as critical when the seven-day dryness level is Dry or Very Dry for the predictive services area containing the fire weather zone.

Neighboring NWS Grand Junction publishes the thresholds in the same family, and they are a useful reference point: relative humidity of 15 percent or less with sustained winds or frequent gusts of 25 mph or greater, occurring together for at least three hours in a 12-hour period, or widely scattered dry thunderstorms with 15 percent or more coverage.

How do evacuations work in Nevada?

Nevada evacuations are issued locally and escalate through a defined vocabulary. Washoe County Emergency Management's preparedness guide defines an Evacuation Advisory as an advisory issued when there is reason to believe the emergency will escalate and require mandatory evacuations, giving residents as much time as possible to arrange transportation.

A Voluntary Evacuation is used when an area is going to be impacted and residents are willing and able to leave early, which helps people with medical issues, pets or travel constraints. For a Mandatory Evacuation, the guide notes that in Nevada the governor has the authority to order mandatory evacuations, and that you must leave immediately.

The Nevada Division of Forestry frames the same period around what residents should expect: notifications and orders, evacuation of people and pets, sheltering in place, and abnormal conditions such as darkness, heat, wind, smoke and traffic.

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

Working through a Nevada fire map in a fixed order gets you a usable answer in under a minute, whether you are checking a distant smoke column or a fire near your road.

1. Open the live fire map and filter to Nevada, or enable location to see fires within a set distance in miles.
2. Look for official perimeters first, since a drawn perimeter means an agency has mapped the fire and filed a record.
3. Open the nearest large incident and read acres, containment, incident type and managing organization.
4. Check the "Last NIFC update", "Last satellite heat" and "Last GOES heat" timestamps before you trust any single number.
5. Scan for Red Flag Warnings and Fire Weather Watches, which tell you how fast conditions could change today.
6. Confirm your own address status with your county's alert system, not with the map.

Smoke frequently crosses state lines here, so compare with the Utah and Wyoming maps, or with our California fire map guide when the haze is arriving from the west. Our fires near me guide covers the location workflow in detail.

What does wildfire smoke do to Nevada air?

Nevada's basins trap smoke the way they trap winter inversions, and the state receives smoke from California, Oregon and Idaho as well as its own fires. The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection runs the state's ambient air quality monitoring network and publishes exceedance data.

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

Because Nevada's fires burn in light fuels, smoke plumes often rise fast and travel far rather than settling locally. Watching the smoke layer alongside the fire layer is the fastest way to tell whether the haze over Reno or Elko is local or imported, as our smoke tracker guide explains.

Frequently asked questions about the Nevada fire map