Pennsylvania Fire Map: Track PA Wildfires Live (2026)

A Pennsylvania fire map now has to cover two real fire seasons, not one. The DCNR Bureau of Forestry logged 1,536 wildfires and 5,527 acres burned in 2025, and the fall of 2024 produced more fires than the entire spring season before it, driven by a record-dry autumn.

What does a Pennsylvania fire map show right now?

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

The DCNR Bureau of Forestry protects wildfire risk across roughly 17 million acres of public and private wildland statewide, and 99 percent of Pennsylvania wildfires are human-caused. That single fact reshapes what a live map is useful for here: the recurring question is rarely "is this a natural ignition" and almost always "is this fire contained, and is it near me."

US Wildfire Tracker scores every detection on whether an official NIFC record is linked, how fresh the perimeter is and how recent the satellite heat is. Weak signals under 25 percent probability are hidden by default, and the app states plainly that hotspots can reflect permitted prescribed burns or industrial heat sources.

That distinction mattered directly in 2023, when the Crystal Fire near Bear Creek Township grew fast enough in scrub-oak fuel to force a 20-mile closure of the Pennsylvania Turnpike's Northeastern Extension — the kind of fast-moving detail a live satellite-and-official-data feed catches before most news coverage does.

When is Pennsylvania's wildfire season?

Pennsylvania's greatest wildfire danger has traditionally fallen in spring — March, April and May — before hardwood canopy leafs out and while last year's dead grass and leaf litter still cover the ground. In 2025, 1,120 of the year's 1,536 wildfires, about 73 percent, happened during spring.

Autumn, October and November, is the second recognized season, once fallen leaves dry out and humidity drops. That pattern reversed dramatically in 2024: DCNR recorded 671 fires and more than 1,900 acres burned statewide that fall, nearly three times the acreage of the spring season and more fires than the entire spring, with 100 wildfires reported in the first week of November alone.

The 10-year statewide average is about 1,257 fires and 4,312 acres a year, according to DCNR figures, which makes both 2025 and fall 2024 above-average years rather than outliers on a flat trend. Debris burning alone caused 841 of the 1,536 fires recorded in 2025.

Pennsylvania's two-season pattern is close to what neighboring West Virginia's fire map guide describes for its own statutory spring and fall seasons, though the two states regulate the burning itself very differently, covered below.

Which agencies fight fires in Pennsylvania?

The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources' Bureau of Forestry, through its Division of Forest Fire Protection, is the lead state wildland firefighting agency, working through district forest offices and a statewide network of appointed Forest Fire Wardens.

Pennsylvania leans more heavily on trained volunteers than most states. DCNR Secretary Cindy Adams Dunn said in 2026 that "making sure our wildfire firefighters are well-equipped and highly trained is essential to protecting our forests and wildlands," announcing $905,846 in grants to 114 volunteer fire companies serving rural communities under 10,000 residents — part of a cost-share program that has distributed more than $14 million since 1982.

Dedicated wildland crews such as the Northern Bucks and Crawford-Erie County wildland fire crews supplement structural departments in the state's more fire-prone forest counties, and mutual aid can pull crews from across district lines during a fast-moving incident like the 2016 Sixteen Mile Fire.

Where do Pennsylvania wildfires usually burn?

Pennsylvania wildfires cluster in the state's mountain and ridge country — the Poconos, the Ridge-and-Valley counties of the north-central forest region, and South Mountain near the Maryland line — where dense scrub oak, mountain laurel and pitch pine create fuel that carries fire readily on dry, windy spring days.

Debris burning is the leading identified cause, responsible for 841 of the state's 1,536 wildfires in 2025, with fireworks and unattended campfires as recurring secondary causes. Arson has driven some of the state's largest individual fires, including the 2016 Sixteen Mile Fire in the Poconos.

Difficult terrain compounds the fuel problem: the Crystal Fire near Bear Creek Township burned in dense volatile oak scrub with a heath understory and mature oak overstory, terrain rough enough that DCNR needed dozers, air tankers and a helicopter to slow it before it reached the Turnpike.

Gypsy moth-killed dead timber has also fed major fires, a factor DCNR cited directly in the 2016 Sixteen Mile Fire alongside dry conditions and wind — the same kind of standing dead-fuel problem that Hurricane Helene created in the North Carolina fire map guide's mountain counties, though from a different cause.

What are the largest wildfires in Pennsylvania history?

Pennsylvania's largest fires in the modern satellite-and-news record are Poconos and northeastern-forest events rather than a single historic megafire on the scale of the western United States.

The 2016 Sixteen Mile Fire was, in the words of then-DCNR spokeswoman Chris Novak, "one of the largest fires we have had in the past 25 years," a benchmark that both the 2016 Sixteen Mile Fire report and the 2024 fall season have since tested. Individual smaller fires, like the 138-acre Ganner Fire near Reading in 2024, still cost tens of thousands of dollars to suppress — DCNR put that fire's cost at roughly $75,000.

What weather drives Pennsylvania fire danger?

Four National Weather Service offices share fire-weather responsibility for Pennsylvania: State College (CTP) for the central counties, Pittsburgh (PBZ) for the southwest, Philadelphia/Mount Holly (PHI) for the southeast alongside Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey, and Binghamton, New York (BGM) for seven northeastern Pennsylvania counties.

A Red Flag Warning means, in NWS's own wording, that "critical fire weather conditions are either occurring now, or will shortly, due to a combination of strong winds, low relative humidity, and dry fuels," and that any fire that starts "may quickly get out of control and become difficult to contain." Each office sets its own Red Flag thresholds by zone rather than one statewide number; see NWS Philadelphia/Mount Holly's fire weather page for one office's zones.

The mechanism behind both of Pennsylvania's seasons is the same: a leafless or leaf-fresh canopy lets sunlight and wind reach ground fuel, low humidity dries that fuel out within hours, and spring rain or fall dew is not enough to offset it. DCNR's Stelter tied the record 2024 fall season directly to "the warmest year-to-date minimum" temperatures the Northeast had recorded in over a century, layered on drought.

How do Pennsylvania's burn bans and burning rules work?

Pennsylvania does not set one statewide burning-hour law the way some neighboring states do. Instead it layers several separate mechanisms, and which one applies depends on where the fire risk is and who declares it.

On state forest land, DCNR imposes a fixed annual restriction: campfires, debris burning and open-flame fire pits are prohibited across state forest boundaries from March 1 through May 25 every year, and again whenever forest-fire danger is rated high, very high or extreme. Camp stoves and, in some designated areas, charcoal grills remain allowed.

County-level burn bans can be triggered when 10 or more local fire chiefs, or half of a county's chiefs, whichever is fewer, petition the district fire warden; a county ban runs up to 30 days and can be extended once. A statewide ban, issued by gubernatorial proclamation, prohibits "smoking of tobacco in any form and building of camp fires" within woodlands or within 200 feet of woodland.

Outside those triggers, everyday open-burning rules for residents are set locally: Pennsylvania's DEP publishes a model ordinance that municipalities can adopt, and permitted burning hours vary town to town rather than following one statewide clock-hour rule. Residents should check their township's ordinance and DCNR's county burn-ban map before burning debris, especially in spring or fall.

How do evacuations work in Pennsylvania?

Pennsylvania has no statewide tiered wildfire evacuation system comparable to the West's Ready-Set-Go framework. The state's Ready PA public guidance tells residents simply to "follow official evacuation orders immediately without delay" once local authorities issue one.

Evacuation decisions are made locally, coordinated between county emergency management, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) and the incident commander on scene, typically DCNR or the local fire company depending on jurisdiction. Some counties describe stages as "Voluntary" and "Mandatory," others use "Precautionary" and "Immediate Threat" or "Pre-Evacuation" and "Mandatory Evacuation" — the terminology is not standardized statewide.

Ready PA recommends keeping a half-full fuel tank or a charged electric vehicle, clearing a 30-foot defensible perimeter of leaves and debris around a home, and texting rather than calling during a disaster to reduce network strain; it also recommends N95 masks be kept on hand for smoke exposure.

The 2023 Crystal Fire showed how fast evacuation logistics can escalate in Pennsylvania's terrain: within roughly 24 hours a wildfire near a residential lake community forced a 20-mile interstate-grade highway closure, a scale of disruption uncommon for a state that rarely faces wildfire evacuations at all.

How do you track Pennsylvania fires in under a minute?

Checking a Pennsylvania fire map takes under a minute once you know what to look for. US Wildfire Tracker is free, needs no account, and works in any browser or as a Chrome side-panel extension.

1. Open wildfire-map.org and filter the national view to Pennsylvania.
2. Check the fire probability tier before assuming a hotspot is a wildfire — many low-confidence detections in spring are permitted debris burns.
3. Open a fire's detail card for acres, percent contained, discovery age, managing organization, and "Last satellite heat" and "Last NIFC update" timestamps.
4. Turn on "fires near me" with location sharing for a distance-based list around the Poconos, South Mountain or any specific town.
5. Watch for an active NWS Red Flag Warning banner from CTP, PBZ, PHI or BGM, which signals statewide fire weather risk even before a fire starts.
6. Use the built-in directions link to Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze if you need a route away from an active fire, and always follow county evacuation instructions first.

The Chrome extension, listed in the Chrome Web Store as "Fire Tracker," opens the same map in a side panel so it stays visible while browsing; get it at the Chrome Web Store. For a broader look at how the underlying feeds work, see our fire tracker guide.

What does wildfire smoke do to Pennsylvania air quality?

Pennsylvania's own wildfires are usually too small and short-lived to push statewide air quality into unhealthy ranges for long, but the state has been repeatedly affected by long-range smoke drifting south from Canadian wildfires in recent summers, in addition to smoke from its own spring and fall fires.

The EPA's Air Quality Index runs from Good (0–50, "little or no risk") through Moderate (51–100) to Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups (101–150), Unhealthy (151–200), Very Unhealthy (201–300) and Hazardous (301 and up, "everyone is more likely to be affected"). Ready PA's own wildfire guidance tells residents to monitor air-quality alerts and keep N95 masks on hand.

US Wildfire Tracker layers a smoke and air-quality overlay on the same live map as the fire data, so a household downwind of an active Pennsylvania fire — or a distant Canadian one — can check current conditions in the same view; see our current wildfires guide for how to read that overlay alongside active incidents.

Frequently asked questions about the Pennsylvania fire map