South Dakota Fire Map: Track Wildfires Live in 2026

A live South Dakota fire map combines official incident records, satellite heat detections and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts in one view. South Dakota holds two fire regimes in one state: fast grass fires on the plains and slower-building forest fires in the Black Hills, and this page covers both, plus the state's largest wildfire on record.

What does a South Dakota fire map show right now?

A South Dakota fire map layers official incident records, mapped perimeters, satellite thermal detections and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts. Reading them together matters because South Dakota's two fire regimes behave so differently: a plains grass fire can double in an hour, while a Black Hills forest fire builds more gradually through timber before a wind event turns it into a crown fire.

Incident records carry the confirmed numbers: fire name, acres, percent contained, incident type and managing organization. Satellite detections from NASA's MODIS and VIIRS instruments and NOAA's GOES satellites fill the gap between agency reports, arriving within minutes to a few hours.

On the live map, each detection carries a probability tier based on whether an official record is linked and how recent the perimeter and heat signals are, which matters most in the Black Hills, where smoke from a genuine forest fire can look identical on satellite to smoke from a permitted slash pile burn.

When is South Dakota's wildfire season?

South Dakota's three National Weather Service offices, Rapid City, Sioux Falls and Aberdeen, each issue the Grassland Fire Danger Index daily during a defined fire weather season. NWS Rapid City's season typically runs April 1 through October 31, while NWS Sioux Falls extends slightly longer, April 1 through November 15, reflecting the state's split geography.

Black Hills forest fire risk peaks later in a dry year than the plains grass season, since timber and duff take longer to dry than cured grass, but both the Jasper Fire in August 2000 and the Legion Lake Fire in December 2017 show that Black Hills fires are not confined to summer.

Which agencies fight fires in South Dakota?

South Dakota Wildland Fire, housed within the South Dakota Department of Public Safety, is the lead state agency for wildfire suppression and investigation, managing the state's engine fleet, aviation contracts and a Type 3 Incident Management Team. Director Jay Wickham has worked with the division for 28 years.

Initial attack is local, carried out by county and volunteer fire departments alongside the U.S. Forest Service in the Black Hills National Forest, where federal, state and county responsibility overlaps within a small geographic area. County commissioners or the county fire marshal issue county-wide burn bans, since there is no single statewide burn permit requirement.

South Dakota's dispatch coordination splits along the same line as its fire regimes. The Great Plains Interagency Dispatch Center in Rapid City coordinates western South Dakota and Nebraska under the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center, while NWS Sioux Falls describes eastern South Dakota's fire weather coordination as spanning both the Rocky Mountain Area and the Eastern Area.

Where do South Dakota wildfires usually burn?

The Black Hills National Forest in western South Dakota carries ponderosa pine and produces the state's most destructive fires: crown fires that can level whole stands of timber once wind pushes flame into the canopy. Custer and Pennington counties, where Jasper, Legion Lake and several other major fires burned, sit at the heart of this belt.

East of the Black Hills, South Dakota's plains and prairie counties burn like the rest of the northern Plains: fast, wind-driven grass fires in cured fuel, generally smaller in total acreage than the biggest Black Hills fires but far more numerous and quicker to threaten a structure once started.

The 1947 Prairie Fires, three separate plains fires burning the same day across Hand, Hughes, Hyde and Potter counties, together burned roughly 250,000 acres, larger than any single Black Hills fire on record, showing how much ground a grass fire can cover compared with a forest fire even in the same state.

What happened in the 2000 Jasper Fire?

The Jasper Fire started August 24, 2000, near Jasper Cave Road west of Jewel Cave National Monument in the Black Hills National Forest, spanning Custer and Pennington counties. It burned 83,508 acres before crews declared it contained on September 8 and fully controlled on September 25, making it the largest single wildfire in South Dakota and Black Hills recorded history, 25 percent larger than any previously reported Black Hills fire.

The cause was arson: Janice Stevenson of Newcastle, Wyoming, dropped a lit match or cigarette that ignited dry grass and pine needles and drove away without extinguishing it. She was later convicted of second-degree arson and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Total damages reached $42 million, and roughly 224 million board-feet of timber were lost.

A reforestation effort planted roughly 150,000 saplings a year across about 400 burned acres starting in 2002, but a 2022 assessment found 46 percent of the most severely burned area still showed minimal tree regeneration, and 27 percent had reset to an earlier stage of ecological succession entirely, a reminder of how long a Black Hills crown fire's effects persist compared with a grass fire's.

What are the largest wildfires in South Dakota history?

Behind the 1947 Prairie Fires and the Jasper Fire, South Dakota's next-largest recorded wildfires all burned in the Black Hills, each a reminder that this small forested pocket of the state produces outsized fires when conditions align.

The Legion Lake Fire started December 11, 2017, when high winds felled a tree onto a power line, igniting nearby slash piles inside Custer State Park. It burned 53,875 acres and forced evacuation of the towns of Buffalo Gap and Fairburn along with the park itself. "I want to thank all the firefighters for their relentless efforts on the Legion Lake Fire," said Custer State Park Superintendent Matt Snyder. "It is because of their hard work that Custer State Park will continue to flourish for years to come."

The McVey Fire of July 1939, lightning-caused and burning roughly seven miles northwest of Hill City, spread at an estimated 2,900 acres per hour at its peak and was fought by nearly every available Civilian Conservation Corps crew in the Black Hills, destroying 17 cabins and 12.2 million board-feet of timber before it was the largest Black Hills fire on record at the time.

What weather drives South Dakota fire danger?

South Dakota's plains fire danger runs on the same Grassland Fire Danger Index used across the northern Plains, which weighs wind, wind gusts, relative humidity and temperature while treating how cured the grass is as the dominant factor in spread rate. All three South Dakota NWS offices publish it daily during fire weather season.

Black Hills forest fire danger adds a factor the plains don't face: standing dead timber from beetle-kill and dense, unthinned stands can carry a surface fire into the canopy far more readily than open grassland ever could, which is why a Black Hills Red Flag Warning is treated as seriously as one on the open plains despite the very different fuel type.

NWS Rapid City posts its Grassland Fire Danger Index map by 5 a.m. during fire weather season, or whenever high, very high or extreme grassland fire danger is forecast for the day, giving crews advance notice before conditions peak in the afternoon.

How do evacuations work in South Dakota?

South Dakota evacuation decisions are made at the county level, with the sheriff's office and county emergency management issuing orders for their jurisdiction. During the Legion Lake Fire, Custer State Park was closed and evacuated, and the towns of Buffalo Gap and Fairburn were ordered out along with roughly 175 to 200 homes between the park and the highway to the east.

Because South Dakota Wildland Fire coordinates directly with county emergency managers rather than issuing statewide evacuation orders itself, always confirm evacuation status through your own county's channel rather than a state agency's general fire updates.

How do you track a South Dakota fire in under a minute?

South Dakota rewards checking which fire regime you're dealing with first, since a Black Hills forest fire and a plains grass fire demand different reading habits.

1. Open the live fire map and filter to South Dakota, or enable location to see fires within a set distance in miles.
2. Note whether the fire is in the Black Hills (forest, slower-building) or on the plains (grass, fast-moving) to set your expectations for how quickly it can grow.
3. Open the nearest incident and read acres, containment, incident type and managing organization.
4. Compare the "Last NIFC update," "Last satellite heat" and "Last GOES heat" timestamps; a wide gap matters most for plains grass fires.
5. Check for Red Flag Warnings or a Grassland Fire Danger outlook across your county and the county upwind.
6. Confirm evacuation status for your own address directly with your county's alert system, not from the map alone.

Fires and smoke often cross into South Dakota from the west, so compare with the Montana and Wyoming maps, and see our guide to finding fires near you for setting up location-based alerts.

What does wildfire smoke do to South Dakota air quality?

South Dakota wildfire smoke is reported through the EPA Air Quality Index used nationwide, where a value of 100 corresponds roughly to the short-term national air quality standard for a given pollutant. Black Hills terrain can trap smoke overnight in valleys like Custer and Spearfish Canyon before it lifts the next day, similar to mountain-basin smoke behavior seen elsewhere in the Rockies.

Plains fires tend to clear faster once wind shifts, since there's less standing fuel left to smolder, while a Black Hills timber fire like Jasper can keep producing smoke for days after the active front has passed. Our smoke and air quality guide explains how those overlays are built from EPA and NWS data.

Frequently Asked Questions About the South Dakota Fire Map