LIVE FIRE DATA
Wildfires as they burn.
A live wildfire map on a 3D globe. Active fires, smoke drift and heat detections plotted as they arrive — free for everyone.
What the fire layer shows
Active fires
Fire activity plotted on the globe from thermal detections — watch new fires appear and existing ones spread or get contained.
Smoke & wind context
The weather layer sits right alongside: see which way the wind is carrying smoke and which communities sit downwind of a fire.
Where it burns
Zoom from the whole planet down to the affected region — forests, grasslands and the wildland-urban edge where fires meet homes.
Cameras nearby
In fire country, public cameras often catch the smoke plume before the news does. Cross-reference the fire with cameras in the area.
Read this if a fire is near you
WorldEye is a situational-awareness map, not an emergency service. If a fire is burning near you, do not use this site to decide whether to evacuate. Evacuation orders and warnings come from local emergency authorities — your fire department, sheriff's office or emergency management agency.
Get your information from official channels: your area's emergency alert system (register for it now if you haven't), local fire agency incident pages, and the national weather service's fire-weather products. Those are the sources that will tell you to leave — and when to go.
Then come back here to understand the bigger picture: how the fire complex is developing, where the smoke is headed, and what the wind is doing next.
How fire tracking works
Satellites carrying thermal instruments scan the planet's surface continuously. When something burns hot enough to stand out against the surrounding landscape, it shows up as a thermal anomaly — and public fire-monitoring programs publish those detections openly.
WorldEye plots those detections on the globe as they arrive, alongside the weather layer. That combination is what makes the map useful: a fire is only half the story — the other half is the wind pushing it and the smoke trailing downwind. Seeing all of it at once turns a list of coordinates into something you can actually read.
And the context keeps going: earthquakes, flights, satellites and 40,000+ public cameras share the same globe. In fire country, that means you can sometimes watch the smoke column from a roadside camera while the satellite data shows the heat source.
Why people watch fires
Fire season has become a fact of life across the western US, the Mediterranean, Australia and beyond. For people living in fire country, a live fire map is part of staying oriented through smoke season — not as a replacement for official alerts, but as context around them.
For everyone else, it's a window onto one of the planet's most powerful forces: how fast a grass fire runs under a wind event, how smoke from one continent can dim the sky of another, how fire perimeters grow and stall against terrain. The map makes the physics visible.
Researchers, journalists and fire-adjacent communities use the same feeds — WorldEye just puts them where you can see them without a specialist's toolkit.
Wildfire tracker FAQ
Is the wildfire tracker free?
Yes — completely. The wildfire layer is part of the free map: no account, no signup, no credit card. Open the site and active fires are already plotted.
How are fires detected?
From thermal anomalies picked up by satellite instruments and published through public fire-monitoring feeds. WorldEye plots those detections on the globe as they arrive, layered with wind and weather data.
Can I use this to decide whether to evacuate?
No — and please don't. Evacuation orders come from local emergency authorities (fire departments, sheriff's offices, emergency management), not from any map site. Use WorldEye to understand the big picture; use official channels for decisions about your safety.
How accurate is the fire data?
Thermal detections are a reliable indicator that something is burning, but they can lag behind fast-moving fires and occasionally pick up false positives from industrial heat. Treat the map as situational awareness, not ground truth.
What should I do if there's a fire near me?
Check your local fire department, emergency management agency or emergency alert system immediately. Sign up for your area's official emergency alerts if you haven't already — that's the system that will tell you to leave, and when.
See fire season as it happens
Free forever. No account. Just the planet, live.
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Explore more
Weather tracker
Live wind, storms and precipitation — the forces that decide where fire goes.
Earthquake tracker
Quakes as they happen — magnitude, depth and location on the same globe.
Live cameras
40,000+ public cameras — watch conditions on the ground near a fire.
Features
Everything the globe can do — free forever layers and Pro intelligence tools.