Wyoming Fire Map: Track Wyoming Wildfires Live in 2026

A live Wyoming fire map brings official NIFC incident records and perimeters, NASA satellite heat detections and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts into one view. This page covers Wyoming's fire season, its agencies, the record 2024 year, and how to follow an incident hour by hour.

What does a Wyoming fire map show right now?

A Wyoming fire map layers four independent feeds: agency incident records, mapped perimeters, satellite thermal detections and National Weather Service fire-weather alerts. Reading them together is the point, because each one is fresh in a different way.

Incident records hold the official figures: fire name, acres, percent contained, incident type and managing organization. They update when an agency files a report, which on a remote Wyoming fire can be many hours after the fire last moved.

Satellite detections fill that gap. NASA's MODIS and VIIRS instruments and NOAA's GOES satellites report heat within minutes to a few hours, which matters in a state where fires regularly start in country with no cell service. 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.

When is Wyoming's wildfire season?

Wyoming's season runs from early summer into late autumn, and it can end weeks later than people expect. In 2024, the Pack Trail Fire ran from September 18 to November 2, and the Elk Fire from September 27 to November 14, both ended by snow rather than containment lines alone.

Peak activity clusters in August and September, when fine fuels are cured and wind events cross the plains. In 2025 the National Interagency Coordination Center recorded dry lightning affecting Wyoming on August 14 to 16, followed by the Red Canyon Fire in central Wyoming, which burned 124,709 acres between August 13 and September 18.

Lightning dominates the acreage. In 2024, lightning fires accounted for 526,309 of Wyoming's 620,069 reported acres, and in 2025 for 164,292 of 172,810 acres.

Which agencies fight wildfires in Wyoming?

The Wyoming State Forestry Division, part of the Office of State Lands and Investments, is the state wildland fire agency. Formed by the Legislature in 1952, it is responsible for fire management on 3.4 million surface acres of state trust land plus cooperative fire management on private and federal lands.

The division is headquartered in Cheyenne with field offices in Newcastle, Casper, Laramie, Riverton, Cody, Buffalo, Pinedale and Lyman, and employs 58 full-time and 28 seasonal staff plus five Good Neighbor Authority foresters. It publishes a Wyoming Wildfire Dashboard and an interactive fire map during the season.

Reporting a fire in Wyoming means calling one of four interagency dispatch centers or 911: Casper Interagency Dispatch, Cody Interagency Dispatch, Teton Interagency Dispatch or Great Plains Interagency Dispatch.

Where do Wyoming wildfires usually burn?

Wyoming burns in two very different places. The mountain ranges, the Bighorns, the Bridger-Teton country and the Medicine Bow, carry conifer and produce long-duration fires. The northeast plains and the sagebrush-steppe carry grass, and produce fast wind-driven runs that cover ground in hours.

The 2024 season showed both. Four northeast Wyoming fires that started in the closing weeks of August, House Draw, Flat Rock, Remington and Constitution, collectively burned over 448,000 acres, much of it non-forested grassland and sagebrush-steppe, according to WyoFile.

Ownership complicates suppression. State Forester Kelly Norris told WyoFile that what distinguished 2024 was the amount of private and state land affected, which she expected to end up at "at least 75%" of the burned area.

What are Wyoming's largest wildfires on record?

The benchmark is 1988. The National Park Service reports that the Yellowstone fires of 1988 affected 36 percent of the park, 793,880 acres, with 42 of the fires caused by lightning and nine by humans, and that fires beginning outside the park burned roughly 500,000 acres of the total.

The Remington Fire crossed a state line. The National Interagency Coordination Center reported that it burned over 40 miles from Wyoming into Montana during a strong wind event on August 21 to 23, 2024.

Wyoming does not publish a verified all-time ranked list of state wildfires. Norris told WyoFile that there is no database showing with certainty how 2024 compares to seasons from decades past, and that recent numbers are more accurate because the state invested in software.

Why was 2024 Wyoming's worst season since 1988?

2024 combined a heavy grass crop with repeated wind events and late-season heat. Reporting agencies logged 620,069 acres in Wyoming, roughly ten times the 60,539 acres burned in neighbouring Colorado the same year.

"Having over 810,000 acres burned in Wyoming is massive," State Forester Kelly Norris told WyoFile on October 21, 2024. "Weather really drove these fires. We had storms coming in, we had wind, and we just had a lot of fuel. It was an extremely challenging fire season."

The Elk Fire rewrote a forest's records. Bighorn National Forest Supervisor Andrew Johnson told WyoFile that "in a matter of three hours it ran 25,000 acres," and that in the last 100 years the largest fire on the forest had been about 18,000 acres, taking over a month to reach that size.

Costs matched the acreage. Norris said the statewide tab could approach $200 million, with Wyoming and its local governments facing close to $60 million, and that the $39 million in the state's Emergency Fire Suppression Account had all been obligated.

What weather drives Wyoming fire danger?

Wyoming fire danger is a wind story first. Sustained wind across cured grass will move fire faster than fuel type or slope, which is why grassland fires here reach five figures of acreage in a single afternoon.

The National Weather Service offices in Cheyenne and Riverton issue Wyoming fire-weather products, and NWS Cheyenne maintains a Wyoming Fire Weather page that gathers current Red Flag Warnings, the significant wildland fire potential outlook, current air quality and the state's air quality monitoring network in one place.

Red Flag Warnings require critical fuels as well as critical weather. Published criteria at nearby NWS Grand Junction give a useful reference for the thresholds in play: relative humidity of 15 percent or less with sustained winds or frequent gusts of 25 mph or greater, occurring together for at least three hours in a 12-hour period, or widely scattered dry thunderstorms with 15 percent or more coverage.

How do evacuations work in Wyoming?

Wyoming evacuations are ordered by county sheriffs and county emergency management, and most counties use a three-level system. During the 2024 fires, Teton County Emergency Management issued evacuation orders and also reduced some areas to what WyoFile described as "a level-two warning, when residents are told to prepare for an evacuation but don't have to leave the area yet."

In practice the levels map to Ready, Set and Go, and Sheridan County moved neighbourhoods between them repeatedly as the Elk Fire shifted. Because the wording varies between counties, read the text of the alert rather than assuming a numbered level means the same thing everywhere.

Fire restrictions are also county-level. In September 2026, the State Forestry Division reported that 19 counties were under some level of fire restriction, alongside Stage 1 restrictions on all BLM lands and on the Bridger-Teton and Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests.

How do you read a Wyoming fire map in 60 seconds?

Wyoming rewards a fixed reading order, because the fire that matters to you is often not the largest one on the screen.

1. Open the live fire map and filter to Wyoming, or enable location to see fires within a set distance in miles.
2. Find official perimeters first; a drawn perimeter means an agency has mapped and reported the fire.
3. Open the nearest incident and read acres, containment, incident type and managing organization.
4. Check the "Last NIFC update", "Last satellite heat" and "Last GOES heat" timestamps, which matter most in grass fuels.
5. Look for Red Flag Warnings and Fire Weather Watches across your county and the county upwind.
6. Confirm evacuation status for your own address with your county's alert system.

Smoke often arrives from outside the state, so compare with the Colorado, Utah and Nevada maps before assuming a local source, and see our guide to following current wildfires for the national picture.

What does wildfire smoke do to Wyoming air?

Wyoming's air quality alerts during fire season are usually driven by smoke, whether from local fires or from the Northwest and Northern Rockies. NWS Cheyenne links current air quality, the AirNow Fire and Smoke Map and the Wyoming Air Quality Monitoring Network from its fire weather page.

Smoke concentrations are 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.

Basin geography traps smoke overnight in the Bighorn Basin, the Wind River valley and the Green River basin, then lifts it during the day. Our smoke and air quality guide explains how those overlays are assembled.

Frequently asked questions about the Wyoming fire map