Wisconsin Fire Map: Track Wisconsin Wildfires Live in 2026

A live Wisconsin fire map layers official DNR incident reports, NASA and NOAA satellite heat detections and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts into one view. Wisconsin is not a western fire state: most of its wildfires are small, human-caused and concentrated in spring, which changes what the map is useful for.

What does the Wisconsin fire map show right now?

The Wisconsin fire map layers four kinds of data: incidents reported by the Wisconsin DNR and local fire departments, satellite thermal detections, active National Weather Service fire-weather alerts and, for larger incidents, a mapped perimeter. In Wisconsin, the satellite layer often lights up first, because most starts here are small debris fires days before any agency logs them.

That matters more in Wisconsin than in a western state with large, tracked fires. The Wisconsin DNR reports that the state averages about 864 wildfires and roughly 1,800 acres burned per year — a fraction of what a single large western fire burns, spread across hundreds of small, fast-suppressed starts.

On the live map, each detection carries a fire probability tier that blends whether an official record is linked, how fresh any perimeter is and how recent the satellite heat is. That distinction matters in a state where open burning is common and legal.

When is Wisconsin's wildfire season?

Wisconsin's wildfire season peaks in spring, not summer. The Wisconsin DNR reports that roughly 60% of the state's annual wildfires occur in March, April and May, before green-up, when dead grass and leaf litter from the previous year are exposed and dry. A shorter second peak follows in fall after leaves drop.

Winter is the quiet season because snow cover suppresses ignition, and summer fires spread more slowly once vegetation greens up and humidity rises — though a dry stretch can still push fire danger up in any month with exposed dead fuel.

Because most Wisconsin fires start with people, the state's most consequential tool is not a satellite layer — it is the burning permit. In DNR forest fire protection areas, a permit is required to burn debris whenever the ground is not completely snow-covered; it does not apply inside incorporated cities and villages, which may set their own rules.

Debris burning remains Wisconsin's number one wildfire cause overall, and DNR reporting attributed almost half of the fires recorded in the unusually active start to the 2025 season to debris burning specifically, alongside sparks from recreational equipment, campfires and hot fireplace ashes.

Which agencies fight wildfires in Wisconsin?

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources runs the state's Wildland Fire Management program, housed in its Division of Forestry. It handles suppression and initial attack across DNR forest fire protection areas, issues burning permits, and operates fire dispatch offices reachable at 1-888-936-7463.

Above the state level, the Eastern Area Coordination Center (EACC), headquartered in Milwaukee, coordinates interagency wildland fire resources across 20 northeastern states, including Wisconsin, through compacts such as the Great Lakes Forest Fire Compact.

Local and volunteer fire departments carry much of the actual suppression load. The 2013 Germann Road Fire drew a response from 44 fire departments plus Wisconsin DNR aircraft and heavy equipment, illustrating how mutual aid between small departments — not a single state agency — extinguishes most Wisconsin wildfires.

State agency

Wisconsin DNR Division of Forestry, Wildland Fire Management program

Geographic coordination

NIFC Eastern Area Coordination Center (EACC), Milwaukee

Fire-weather forecasts

NWS Green Bay, Milwaukee/Sullivan, La Crosse and Duluth

Evacuation authority

County sheriffs and local emergency managers

Where do Wisconsin wildfires usually burn?

Most Wisconsin wildfires burn inside the DNR's forest fire protection areas, which cover the forested northern and central two-thirds of the state where the burning-permit system applies. Southern Wisconsin's farmland and cities see far fewer wildland fires, though grass and brush fires still occur along field edges and rail corridors.

Within that northern and central zone, the landscape that burns fastest is sandy outwash country: dry, well-drained soils that carry jack pine, scrub oak and grass rather than the mixed hardwood forest common elsewhere in the state. Those same sandy landscapes also carry Wisconsin's most fire-dependent, fire-adapted plant communities.

What makes Wisconsin's sand country fire-prone?

Wisconsin's sandiest, most fire-prone ground traces back to a glacial lake. The Central Sand Plains, a 3,420-square-mile ecological landscape in central Wisconsin, sits on lacustrine and outwash sand left behind when Glacial Lake Wisconsin drained. The DNR describes the soils as excessively drained with very low water capacity — droughty ground that dries out fast after snowmelt.

A similar sandy outwash landscape, the Northwest Sands, covers roughly 1,956 square miles of Bayfield, Douglas, Washburn and Burnett counties in the state's far northwest. The DNR calls it among the best places anywhere to manage the globally rare pine barrens community, with jack pine, northern pin oak and red pine adapted to frequent fire.

That landscape is where Wisconsin's largest fire of the last several decades started. On May 14, 2013, logging equipment sparked the Germann Road Fire in the town of Gordon, Douglas County. Driven by winds of 12 to 21 mph and relative humidity near 26%, it burned nearly 10 miles long and a mile and a half wide through sandy pine forest before crews declared it contained the next evening.

The Germann Road Fire destroyed 104 structures, including 23 homes, across Douglas and Bayfield counties and threatened roughly 450 more before 44 fire departments, 167 DNR personnel, five heavy bulldozers and 13 aircraft stopped it — the largest aircraft response in Wisconsin firefighting history. It remains the clearest modern reminder that the state's sandy pine country can burn like the West on the right dry, windy day.

What are the largest wildfires in Wisconsin history?

Wisconsin's largest fire on record dwarfs everything since. The Peshtigo Fire of October 8, 1871, burned an estimated 1.2 million acres across northeastern Wisconsin and adjacent Michigan and remains the deadliest wildfire in United States history. Every fire the DNR has recorded since is smaller by orders of magnitude.

Sources differ on how many died at Peshtigo. Wisconsin's 1873 legislative report listed 1,182 names of the dead or missing, while other historical accounts put the toll as high as 2,500, since local records burned along with the town. A combination of drought, widespread slash-and-burn land clearing and a strong wind turned scattered fires into one firestorm the same night as the Great Chicago Fire, 250 miles south.

No fire since has approached Peshtigo's scale, but the DNR's list shows a clear pattern: nearly every large modern Wisconsin fire burned in the same sandy, pine-dominated country in the state's north and northwest, usually in spring before green-up.

What weather drives Wisconsin fire danger?

Wisconsin's Red Flag criteria are set jointly by four National Weather Service offices and the DNR in the state's Fire Weather Operating Plan. A Fire Weather Watch or Red Flag Warning is coordinated when sustained 10-minute winds reach 15 mph or more, minimum relative humidity falls to 25% or less, temperatures reach 75°F or higher, and fuels are dry enough by a Canadian fuel-moisture index the plan tracks.

A Fire Weather Watch is typically issued 18 to 72 hours ahead of expected conditions, giving the DNR and U.S. Forest Service time to coordinate before a Red Flag Warning follows. The 2025 Wisconsin Fire Weather Operating Plan, coordinated among NWS Green Bay, Milwaukee/Sullivan, La Crosse and Duluth alongside the DNR and USFS, notes these are subjective guidelines — offices may issue warnings at lesser thresholds if fuels are agreed to be critically dry.

Wisconsin DNR Forest Fire Section Manager Jim Bernier told Wisconsin Public Radio that drought conditions have been extending the state's fire-staffing needs well beyond the traditional spring window: "with these droughty conditions that we're experiencing, we're seeing these fire staffing needs occurring more and more all year round."

How do evacuations work in Wisconsin?

Wisconsin has no statewide, numbered wildfire evacuation-level system like the West's Ready-Set-Go or Level 1-2-3 wording. Evacuation orders during a Wisconsin wildfire come directly from county sheriffs and local emergency management officials, coordinated with the fire departments and DNR crews working the incident.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services' Wildfire Toolkit, written for residents in fire-prone counties, instructs people to prepare an evacuation plan in advance and then simply evacuate when local authorities order it — there is no preset tier to interpret, only a direct instruction from whoever is managing the incident.

When large fires do threaten homes, as the Germann Road Fire did to roughly 450 structures in 2013, county officials and fire commanders make evacuation calls directly rather than through a preset alert level. Sign up for your county's emergency alert system in advance, since a fire map can show you where a fire is but not whether your address is included in an order.

How do you track Wisconsin fires in under a minute?

A Wisconsin fire map is most useful when you check it in the same order every time, whether during an active local fire or a routine spring check before a burn.

1. Open the live fire map and filter to Wisconsin, or allow location access to see fires within a set distance of you.
2. Check whether any incident has an official DNR record linked, rather than only a satellite hotspot.
3. Open the nearest incident and read acres, percent contained, incident type and managing organization.
4. Check the "Last DNR update," "Last satellite heat" and "Last GOES heat" timestamps to judge how current each number is.
5. Scan for NWS Fire Weather Watches or Red Flag Warnings over your county.
6. If you plan to burn today, check the DNR's daily burning restrictions for your county before lighting anything.

The same routine works if you are trying to explain a smoky sky with no local fire in sight — check neighboring states such as the North Carolina fire map or the Georgia fire map for comparison on how other eastern states report activity, and see our guide to reading a live US wildfire map for the layer-by-layer detail.

What does wildfire smoke do to Wisconsin air quality?

Wisconsin's wildfire smoke exposure comes from two sources: local debris and forest fires, and smoke that drifts in from fires burning in other states or Canada. Because Wisconsin's own fires are mostly small, imported smoke from outside the state is often the bigger driver of poor air quality days.

Air quality from any smoke source is reported through the EPA's Air Quality Index, which uses six color-coded categories. An AQI value of 100 corresponds roughly to the level of the short-term national air quality standard for a given pollutant.

UW-Madison forest and wildlife ecology professor Volker Radeloff, who studies wildland-urban interface risk, told Wisconsin Public Radio that homeowner preparation still matters even where most damage is not from flame contact: nationally, of all homes within a wildfire's perimeter, only about 11% actually burn, largely because of nearby vegetation and building material choices. Our smoke and air quality guide covers how the map's smoke overlays are built.

Frequently asked questions about the Wisconsin fire map