US Wildfire Tracker
Utah Fire Map: Track Utah Wildfires Live in 2026
A live Utah fire map combines official NIFC incident records and perimeters, NASA satellite heat detections and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts into one picture of the state. This page explains Utah's closed fire season, its agencies, its largest fires and how cheatgrass changes the odds.
What does a Utah fire map show right now?
A Utah fire map layers four independent feeds: incident records filed by agencies, mapped perimeters, satellite thermal detections, and active National Weather Service fire-weather alerts. Most of the confusion people have with these maps comes from reading one layer as if it were all four.
Incident records supply the figures that get quoted: name, acres, containment, incident type and managing organization. They are official, and they lag, because they change when an agency updates them rather than when the fire runs.
Satellite detections from NASA's MODIS and VIIRS instruments and NOAA's GOES satellites report heat within minutes to a few hours. In Utah's Great Basin country that matters, because a start in sagebrush 40 miles from the nearest road is often visible from orbit long before it has a name. On the live map, each detection gets a probability tier reflecting whether an official record is attached and how fresh the heat is.
When is Utah's wildfire season?
Utah is unusual because its fire season is written into state law. Under Utah Code 65A-8-211 and Division of Environmental Quality rules, a closed fire season runs from June 1 to October 31, with different burning rules the rest of the year.
During the closed season, non-agricultural open burning is not permitted, agricultural fenceline or ditch burning requires notification to the nearest fire department, and other agricultural burning needs a permit from a fire warden or county sheriff. From November through March non-agricultural burning is not permitted either, and April and May burning falls inside a 30-day window set by each county.
Activity does not respect those dates. BLM Utah State Fire Management Officer Chris Delaney has said that Utah's fire season started in January and that "a year-round fire season has become the norm, and not the exception."
| Year | Human-caused fires | Lightning fires | Total fires | Total acres |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 717 | 376 | 1,093 | 159,310 |
| 2024 | 747 | 464 | 1,211 | 90,417 |
Human ignitions dominate the count. Governor Spencer Cox's office reported that 72 percent of Utah's wildfires were human-caused as of July 31, 2025, when he declared a 30-day state of emergency as fires intensified.
Which agencies fight wildfires in Utah?
The Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands manages wildfires on state and private land outside city limits, coordinating through County Fire Wardens. Fires on federal and tribal land are managed by the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs.
When a wildfire is reported through 911, the call goes to one of five Regional Interagency Fire Centers, which dispatch the closest capable resources. The division's Wildland Fire Operations Center fields Hotshot, initial attack, fuels and engine crews, and FFSL reports that more than three quarters of Utah wildfires are stopped before they exceed 10 acres.
Above the state sits the Great Basin Coordination Center, which mobilizes resources across Utah, Nevada, southern Idaho and western Wyoming through dispatch centers including Color Country, Moab, Northern Utah, Richfield and Uintah Basin.
Where do Utah wildfires usually burn?
Utah burns in two very different fuel systems. The high country of the Wasatch, Uinta and southern plateaus carries conifer and aspen, where fires burn hot and long. The western deserts and valley bottoms carry sagebrush and invasive annual grass, where fires burn fast and wide.
Acreage tends to come from the second group. The 2007 Milford Flat Fire in Millard and Beaver counties, still Utah's largest on record, burned 363,052 acres of largely non-forested terrain.
Development changes the stakes. FFSL counts 681 "Communities at Risk" within or near Utah's wildland-urban interface, which is why a fire's location matters at least as much as its size when you are reading the map.
How does cheatgrass change Utah fire behavior?
Cheatgrass is the single biggest reason Great Basin fires in Utah and neighboring states behave differently from forest fires. According to the US Geological Survey, cheatgrass was introduced from Europe or Eurasia in the mid to late 1800s as a seed and straw contaminant, germinates in fall and early spring, and is disrupting the fire cycle in sage habitat, leading to more frequent and more intense burns.
The mechanism is a feedback loop. Cheatgrass cures earlier than native grasses, providing a continuous fine fuel between shrubs; fire then removes the native shrubs and opens more ground for cheatgrass. USGS describes this as a positive feedback loop that reduces or eliminates the chance for native sagebrush to recover after fire.
For map reading, the practical consequences are speed and timing. A cheatgrass-carried fire can cover ground in an afternoon that a timber fire needs a week to cover, so satellite heat detections in sagebrush country deserve more urgency than their acreage suggests. The same dynamic drives the Nevada fire map across the state line.
What are Utah's largest wildfires on record?
Utah's state hazard mitigation plan publishes a ranked list of the largest wildfires recorded between 2005 and 2018, which remains the clearest official comparison of major Utah fires.
| Rank | Fire | Location | Acres | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Milford Flat | Near Milford | 363,052 | 2007 |
| 2 | Pole Creek | 12 miles NE of Nephi | 102,190 | 2018 |
| 3 | Brian Head | Near Brian Head | 71,673 | 2017 |
| 4 | Dollar Ridge | 8 miles SW of Duchesne | 68,869 | 2018 |
| 5 | West Side | 20 miles NW of St. George | 68,264 | 2005 |
| 6 | Jarvis | 10 miles SW of St. George | 50,738 | 2006 |
| 7 | Twitchell Canyon | 7 miles E of Manderfield | 45,126 | 2010 |
| 8 | Big Pole | Skull Valley near Grantsville | 44,345 | 2009 |
Recent seasons have added to the list. In 2025, the Monroe Canyon Fire in central Utah burned 73,721 acres between July 13 and September 4, and the France Canyon Fire burned 34,943 acres, according to the National Interagency Coordination Center.
Historic seasons put single fires in context. In 2007, 1,385 Utah wildfires burned nearly 650,000 acres, and the 2012 season burned 415,266 acres at a cost of more than $50 million, leading to five Fire Management Assistance Grants.
What weather drives Utah fire danger?
Utah fire danger is a product of wind, humidity and cured fuel. The National Weather Service issues Fire Weather Watches and Red Flag Warnings only when critical weather coincides with fuels that land managers have flagged as critical.
NWS Salt Lake City covers most of the state, while NWS Grand Junction issues fire weather products for eastern Utah fire zones 485, 486, 487, 490 and 491. Grand Junction publishes its Red Flag criteria: relative humidity of 15 percent or less with sustained winds or frequent gusts of 25 mph or greater, both for at least three hours in a 12-hour period, or widely scattered dry thunderstorms with 15 percent or more coverage.
The Great Basin interagency annual operating plan adds the fuels half of the test: wind and humidity criteria vary across the geographic area, and a warning requires fuels rated dry or very dry in the relevant predictive services area.
How do evacuations work in Utah?
Evacuations in Utah are ordered locally, by county sheriffs and county emergency managers, and communicated through county alert systems. Be Ready Utah, the state preparedness program run through the Division of Emergency Management, tells residents to sign up for county emergency phone alerts and to follow directions from local authorities.
Utah counties commonly frame warnings with the Ready, Set, Go wildland fire action guide, which Be Ready Utah lists among its wildfire downloads, and several counties publish zone-based evacuation maps. Because the exact wording varies between counties, read the alert text rather than assuming a label.
Statewide, Utah publishes active incidents, fire restrictions and prevention guidance through the Utah Fire Info service, and FFSL maintains burn permit rules through fire wardens and county sheriffs.
How do you read a Utah fire map in 60 seconds?
A fixed order gets a useful answer out of a Utah fire map faster than free-form panning. This routine works for a routine check and during an active incident.
- Open the live fire map and filter to Utah, or enable location to see fires within a set distance in miles.
- Find official perimeters first; a drawn perimeter means an agency has mapped the fire and filed a record.
- Open the nearest large incident and read acres, containment, incident type and managing organization.
- Check the "Last NIFC update", "Last satellite heat" and "Last GOES heat" timestamps to judge how current each number is.
- Look for Red Flag Warnings or Fire Weather Watches over your county, which change how quickly the fire can move.
- Confirm evacuation status for your own address through your county's alert system.
Smoke and fire often come from different states, so check the Nevada and Wyoming maps when Utah skies are hazy but no local incident explains it. Our fire tracker guide explains each layer in more depth.
We built US Wildfire Tracker with states like Utah in mind, where a fire can start in cheatgrass and cross thousands of acres before the first official acreage figure is filed. Our answer is to show you the age of every number: the last time an agency updated the incident, the last satellite heat detection, and the last GOES heat signal, all on the same panel. In fast rangeland fuels, knowing that a figure is nine hours old is often more useful than the figure itself.The US Wildfire Tracker team — builders of the wildfire-map.org live map and Chrome extension
What does wildfire smoke do to Utah air?
Smoke is Utah's most widespread wildfire effect, and the state's valleys trap it. After the 2007 season, when Milford Flat burned, Utah's Division of Air Quality reported 40 days of unhealthy air, 24 more than the previous year, and dust storms on the Milford Flat burn scar made driving hazardous on I-15 for months.
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.
| Category | AQI | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Good | 0 to 50 | Air quality is satisfactory, and air pollution poses little or no risk. |
| Moderate | 51 to 100 | Acceptable, but a risk for people who are unusually sensitive to air pollution. |
| Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | 101 to 150 | 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. |
| 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. |
Post-fire hazards outlast the smoke. Utah's 2025 emergency declaration named burn scars, debris flows and post-fire flooding as compounding threats that linger after the flames are out. Our smoke tracking guide covers how smoke overlays are produced.
Frequently asked questions about the Utah fire map
When is Utah's closed fire season?
June 1 through October 31, set by Utah Code 65A-8-211 and Division of Environmental Quality rules. During those months non-agricultural open burning is not permitted, agricultural fenceline or ditch burning requires notification to the nearest fire department, and other agricultural burning needs a permit from a fire warden or county sheriff. Different rules apply from November through May.
What is the largest wildfire in Utah history?
The 2007 Milford Flat Fire, which burned 363,052 acres in Millard and Beaver counties. The Utah State Hazard Mitigation Plan describes it as the largest wildfire in Utah's recent recorded history. That same year, 1,385 Utah wildfires burned nearly 650,000 acres statewide, and the Neola North Fire caused three firefighter fatalities.
How many Utah wildfires are human-caused?
Most of them. Utah's Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands reported that 55 percent of 2024 wildfires were human-caused, and the governor's office reported 72 percent as of July 31, 2025. FFSL also estimates that roughly half of all Utah fires are preventable, which is why the Fire Sense prevention campaign targets specific behaviors such as dragging tow chains and parking on dry grass.
Why do Utah rangeland fires grow so fast?
Invasive annual grass. According to the USGS, cheatgrass cures earlier than native grasses and fills the gaps between shrubs with continuous fine fuel, which increases both the frequency and intensity of burns and creates a feedback loop that prevents sagebrush from recovering. A cheatgrass-carried fire can cross ground in hours that a timber fire would take days to cover.
How fast do Utah fire map layers update?
Satellite thermal detections from VIIRS, MODIS and GOES arrive within minutes to a few hours of a pass. Official NIFC incident records and perimeters update on agency schedules, often once or twice a day on a large incident. US Wildfire Tracker refreshes automatically every few minutes while it is open and shows the last update time for each feed separately.
Who orders evacuations in Utah?
County sheriffs and county emergency management, communicated through county alert systems. Be Ready Utah advises signing up for county emergency phone alerts in advance and following directions from local authorities. It also advises evacuating on your own initiative if your location or route looks unsafe, rather than waiting for an official message to arrive.
How many Utah fires stay small?
Most. The Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands reports that more than three quarters of all Utah wildfires are extinguished before they exceed 10 acres, and that 93 percent were caught at 10 acres or less in 2024. That is why a new Utah detection on a fire map most often disappears within a day rather than turning into a named incident.
Which weather service offices cover Utah fire weather?
NWS Salt Lake City covers most of the state, and NWS Grand Junction issues fire weather products for eastern Utah fire zones 485, 486, 487, 490 and 491 under an interagency agreement. Both operate under Great Basin coordination, which requires that fuels be rated dry or very dry before a Red Flag Warning is issued on wind and humidity criteria.
Track Utah fires in real time
Filter to Utah, see official perimeters and satellite heat on one map, and check how old each figure is before you act on it.