US Wildfire Tracker
Texas Fire Map: How to Track Texas Wildfires Live in 2026
A Texas fire map layers official incident records from Texas A&M Forest Service and NIFC over NASA satellite heat detections and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts. This page explains what each layer means in Texas, when the state burns, and how to check your county quickly.
What does a Texas fire map show right now?
A Texas fire map shows four separate things at once: incident records filed by the agencies fighting each fire, mapped perimeters, satellite heat detections from NASA and NOAA sensors, and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts. US Wildfire Tracker fuses those feeds into a single free view at wildfire-map.org.
Those layers age at different speeds. An official perimeter is redrawn on an agency schedule, often once a day after a mapping flight; a satellite hotspot appears within minutes to hours of an overpass. Reading both timestamps matters more in Texas than almost anywhere, because Panhandle grass fires outrun yesterday's perimeter.
Texas A&M Forest Service reported 1,078 wildfires for 301,528 acres in 2026 as of September 2, with 313 of those fires and 121,774 of those acres arriving in August alone. That single month tells you why a live map beats a weekly summary in this state.
Filtering by state is the first move. US Wildfire Tracker filters to Texas or uses browser geolocation to list fires within a set distance in miles, which answers the only question that matters: is anything burning between you and where you need to be. The same method applies on any fire tracker map.
When is the Texas wildfire season?
Texas has two distinct fire seasons, and the bigger one runs through winter. Texas A&M Forest Service builds seasonal outlooks for what it calls the dormant fire season, "which are driven by late winter cold fronts and dormant grasses," and treats the second season as the summer drought period when heat and flash drought cure fuels again.
Brad Smith, then predictive services department head at Texas A&M Forest Service, put the peak precisely: "Mid-February through mid-April is the peak of winter/spring fire season." He described the underlying mechanism plainly — "I sometimes call it the dormant season. We have the cold winter weather that freezes and kills our grasses or sends them into dormancy," he told AgriLife Today.
The 2025–26 dormant season started early. Texas A&M Forest Service reported wildfire response running 136 percent above normal from October 2025 through mid-January 2026, with personnel responding to 434 wildfires that burned 11,425 acres in that window.
Summer is not a quiet season either. Walter Flocke, a fire analyst at Texas A&M Forest Service, explained the August 2026 spike this way: "The rapid onset of a flash drought increased fire occurrence and intensity statewide in August." He added that "under flash drought conditions, grasses, brush and timber fuels lose moisture rapidly and become susceptible to ignition."
Which agencies fight wildfires in Texas?
Texas A&M Forest Service is the state agency responsible for wildfire response in Texas, and it is the source of most incident records you will see on a Texas fire map. Its fire chief in 2026 is Jared Karns; its predictive services department publishes the seasonal outlooks and fire danger products the rest of the state plans around.
Local fire departments, many of them volunteer, take initial attack on the great majority of Texas ignitions, and Texas A&M Forest Service surges state engines, dozers, aircraft and incident management teams when a fire exceeds local capacity. The Texas Division of Emergency Management coordinates the wider state response during multi-county events. Texas also sits in the National Interagency Fire Center's Southern Area, mobilized through the Southern Area Coordination Center.
Where do Texas wildfires usually burn?
Texas wildfires concentrate west of Interstate 35, in the grass and rangeland of the High Plains, Rolling Plains and Southern Plains. Texas A&M Forest Service flagged those regions in January 2026 as carrying heavy grass loads that "could support large, hard-to-control fires under dry and windy conditions" after an above-normal growing season.
The Panhandle is the state's megafire country. Both of the largest wildfires in Texas history burned there, in the fine, continuous, freeze-cured grass that lets a fire run for tens of miles in a day when a dry cold front arrives. Fire behavior in that fuel type is driven by wind far more than by terrain.
Central and East Texas burn differently. The Lost Pines of Bastrop County produced the most destructive fire in state history in a loblolly pine stand, and the Cross Timbers west of Fort Worth produced the 90,400-acre Ross Fire in 2026. Timber and brush hold heat longer, so satellite detections keep reappearing there for days after containment.
If you are comparing regions, our national guides on reading a wildfire map and on current wildfires explain the fuel-type differences in more depth, and the neighbouring Oklahoma fire map page covers the same Southern Plains grass fuels from the other side of the state line.
What are the largest wildfires in Texas history?
The Smokehouse Creek Fire of 2024 is the largest wildfire in Texas history at an estimated 1,058,482 acres. It started February 26, 2024 north of Stinnett in Hutchinson County, crossed into the Oklahoma Panhandle, and reached full containment on March 16, 2024 according to Texas A&M Forest Service.
| Fire | Year | Acres | Where | Why it is on the list |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smokehouse Creek | 2024 | 1,058,482 | Hutchinson County and the Panhandle | Largest wildfire in Texas history; crossed into Oklahoma |
| East Amarillo Complex | 2006 | 907,245 | Texas Panhandle | Second largest in state history |
| Ross Fire | 2026 | 90,400 | Palo Pinto County | Largest summer wildfire recorded in Texas; 167 structures destroyed |
| Bastrop County Complex | 2011 | Roughly 32,000 | Bastrop County, Lost Pines | Most destructive in state history; 1,696 structures lost |
The Bastrop County Complex is the reminder that acreage and damage are different measurements. It ignited September 4, 2011, burned a fraction of Smokehouse Creek's footprint, and still destroyed 1,696 structures and killed two people. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department records that the fire affected 96 percent of the 6,565-acre Bastrop State Park.
The 2026 Ross Fire in Palo Pinto County reached 90,400 acres and 38 percent containment by September 4, with 167 structures destroyed, 95 damaged and 453 saved. Boe Adler, a Texas A&M Forest Service regional operations chief serving as day operations section chief, described the work at that stage: "Firefighters continue working across the incident to strengthen containment lines and extinguish remaining heat."
What weather drives Texas fire danger?
Wind, low humidity and cured fuel drive Texas fire danger, and the National Weather Service converts that combination into two products: the Fire Weather Watch and the Red Flag Warning. Criteria are set locally by each forecast office, so a Red Flag Warning in the Panhandle is defined differently from one on the Gulf coast.
| Product | Relative humidity | Wind | Fire danger condition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red Flag Warning / Fire Weather Watch | Minimum relative humidity 15 percent or less | 20-foot winds of 20 mph or higher and/or gusts to 35 mph or higher | NFDRS adjective fire danger rating of High or higher |
| Rangeland or Grassland Fire Danger Statement | Minimum relative humidity 20 percent or less | 20-foot wind speeds of 15 mph or higher | NFDRS adjective fire danger rating of High or higher |
Timing separates the two alerts. The Amarillo office states that Fire Weather Watches "will be issued to indicate the potential for dangerous fire weather conditions 24 to 96 hours in advance," while a Red Flag Warning "denotes a high degree of confidence" that criteria will occur "in 12 to 24 hours or less." The event verifies when the conditions are met simultaneously for three hours or more. Read the full NWS Amarillo criteria.
The NWS glossary sets the national baseline at sustained wind averaging 15 mph or greater, relative humidity of 25 percent or less, and temperature above 75 degrees Fahrenheit, on top of a National Fire Danger Rating System rating of high to extreme. Texas offices tighten those numbers for local fuels.
Who issues burn bans across Texas counties?
Burn bans in Texas are county decisions, not state ones. Texas A&M Forest Service states that "a county judge or county commissioners court" can put burn bans in place when drought conditions exist, which is why the ban map is a patchwork that changes county by county through a dry spell.
The state agency supplies the drought measurement rather than the order: Texas A&M Forest Service provides "drought-determination information using the Keetch Byram Drought Index to Texas county governments" and publishes the statewide picture on its burn bans and advisories page. It also publishes a statewide preparedness level on a one-to-five scale set on "fuel conditions, weather, activity, and resource availability," listed at Level 3 in September 2026.
This matters when interpreting a live map. A cluster of new hotspots in a county without a burn ban during a dry February is often debris burning, still the leading cause of Texas wildfires; equipment use is second.
How do evacuations work in Texas?
Texas has no single statewide evacuation vocabulary. Evacuation orders come from local officials — county judges, sheriffs and city emergency managers — and the wording varies between jurisdictions, so the safe assumption is that any instruction naming your road or subdivision applies to you immediately.
Texas A&M Forest Service's own guidance is to plan before the order arrives. "Don't wait for an emergency to occur to start planning for it," said Wes Moorehead, then fire chief at Texas A&M Forest Service, in the agency's October 2022 evacuation-planning guidance. The agency recommends assembling a go-kit around five categories: people and pets, prescriptions, papers, personal needs and priceless items.
A live map supports that decision but never replaces it. US Wildfire Tracker surfaces evacuation orders, warnings and road closures from official alerts where agencies publish them, and offers directions away from a fire through Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze. It is not an official emergency service.
How do you read a Texas fire map in a minute?
Reading a Texas fire map quickly is a fixed sequence, not browsing. The goal is to establish in under sixty seconds whether fire weather is active over you, whether anything is burning nearby, and how old the newest information about it is.
- Open the live map and filter to Texas, or allow location access to list fires within a set distance in miles.
- Look for National Weather Service fire-weather polygons first. A Red Flag Warning over your county changes how much weight every other marker deserves.
- Open the strongest marker near you and read its fire probability tier, which fuses whether an official NIFC record is linked with how fresh the perimeter and satellite heat are.
- Check the two timestamps: "Last NIFC update" and "Last satellite heat." A stale perimeter with fresh heat means the fire has moved since it was last mapped.
- Read acres, percent contained and managing organization, then confirm against Texas A&M Forest Service and your county emergency management before acting.
- Leave the tab or Chrome side panel open. Data refreshes automatically every few minutes, and if a refresh fails the app shows the last saved results.
Weak signals below 25 percent probability are hidden by default and can be switched on. That default exists because thermal sensors also detect prescribed burns, flares and industrial heat — a real consideration in the Permian Basin, where gas flaring produces persistent thermal anomalies that are not wildfires. Our live fire tracker guide walks through the same checks in more detail.
We built the Texas view around one problem: in Panhandle grass, a perimeter mapped last night can be twenty miles out of date by mid-afternoon. So we put the two timestamps on every fire card and score each detection by how well the official record and the satellite heat agree. When a Red Flag Warning polygon sits over fresh heat, we want that visible in one glance rather than buried three clicks down. Everything else on the map exists to support that single judgment.The US Wildfire Tracker team — builders of the wildfire-map.org live map and Chrome extension
What does wildfire smoke do to Texas air?
Wildfire smoke moves far beyond the fire perimeter, and Texas receives smoke from its own fires plus long-range transport from the Southwest, the Northern Rockies and Canada. The measurement that matters is the Air Quality Index, which the EPA describes as having "six color-coded categories, each corresponding to a range of index values."
| Category | AQI range | Official EPA description |
|---|---|---|
| Good | 0 to 50 | "Air quality is satisfactory, and air pollution poses little or no risk." |
| Moderate | 51 to 100 | "Air quality is acceptable. However, there may be a risk for some people, particularly those who are unusually sensitive to air pollution." |
| Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | 101 to 150 | "Members of sensitive groups may experience health effects. The general public is less likely to be affected." |
| Unhealthy | 151 to 200 | "Some members of the general public may experience health effects; members of sensitive groups may experience more serious health effects." |
| Very Unhealthy | 201 to 300 | "Health alert: The risk of health effects is increased for everyone." |
| Hazardous | 301 and higher | "Health warning of emergency conditions: everyone is more likely to be affected." |
The EPA notes 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." See AirNow's AQI basics. US Wildfire Tracker carries smoke and air-quality overlays alongside the fire layers, and our forest fire smoke tracker guide explains when to trust forecasts over ground monitors.
Frequently asked questions about the Texas fire map
How often does a Texas fire map update?
It depends on the layer. Satellite heat detections from VIIRS, MODIS and GOES arrive within minutes to hours of a sensor pass. Official incident records and perimeters update on agency schedules, often once or twice a day. US Wildfire Tracker re-reads its sources automatically every few minutes while the tab or Chrome side panel stays open, and shows the last saved results if a refresh fails.
What was the largest wildfire in Texas history?
The Smokehouse Creek Fire of 2024, at an estimated 1,058,482 acres. It began February 26, 2024 north of Stinnett in Hutchinson County, spread across the Texas Panhandle and into Oklahoma, and Texas A&M Forest Service reported full containment on March 16, 2024. The 2006 East Amarillo Complex, at 907,245 acres, is second.
When is peak wildfire season in Texas?
Mid-February through mid-April is the peak of the winter and spring fire season, according to Texas A&M Forest Service predictive services. That season is driven by late winter cold fronts moving across freeze-cured dormant grass. A second period of elevated danger arrives with summer heat and flash drought, as it did in August 2026.
Does a hotspot on the map always mean a wildfire?
No. Satellite sensors detect heat, not fire type. A detection can be a prescribed burn, an agricultural burn, a gas flare or another industrial heat source, which is a common source of false positives in the Permian Basin. US Wildfire Tracker hides weak signals below 25 percent probability by default and warns that hotspots can reflect non-wildfire heat.
Who decides burn bans in Texas?
County governments do. Texas A&M Forest Service states that a county judge or county commissioners court can put a burn ban in place when drought conditions exist. The state agency supplies drought-determination information using the Keetch Byram Drought Index to county governments and publishes the resulting statewide advisories, but the order itself is local.
What does a Red Flag Warning mean in the Texas Panhandle?
For the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles, the National Weather Service office in Amarillo issues one when minimum relative humidity is 15 percent or less, 20-foot winds reach 20 mph or gusts reach 35 mph, and the NFDRS adjective fire danger rating is High or higher. Those conditions must be met simultaneously for at least three hours.
Track Texas fires in real time
Filter to Texas, switch on the fire-weather layer, and see official incident records and fresh satellite heat on one free map.