
California Live Fire Maps - anigbrowl
https://ucanr.edu/sites/fire/Wildfire_Health_-_Safety/Current/
======
scott113341
CalTopo (my favorite mapping software, and originally made for
search/rescue/fire [1]) map with overlays:
[https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=38.59058,-122.75299&z=11&b=m...](https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=38.59058,-122.75299&z=11&b=map&a=modis_mps)

[1] [https://caltopo.blogspot.com/2011/12/launching-
caltopocom.ht...](https://caltopo.blogspot.com/2011/12/launching-
caltopocom.html)

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totalperspectiv
Excellent maps, thanks for sharing, commenting so I can find this again.

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privong
> commenting so I can find this again.

If you upvote the GP's coment, you can find it that way too. If you go to your
account page (by clicking your username in the upper right on the page),
there's be links that say "upvoted submissions / comments", which will provide
the full list of what you've voted on previously.

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fernly
Umm... it shows no fires at all. (Edit: tried in both Chrome and Firefox.)

In fact the Kincade fire is actively burning and only a few percent contained
while 180,000 residents of Sonoma County have been ordered to evacuate.

[https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/10/26/kincade-fire-
authorit...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/10/26/kincade-fire-authorities-
bracing-for-dangerous-spread-plead-for-residents-to-evacuate/)

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adrianmonk
FYI, I also saw nothing at all, and no indication that anything was still
loading, then eventually it loaded.

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kd5bjo
I got a loading spinner, and then an empty map of CA, and then the data loaded
in, in distinct stages. If loading had gotten stuck at the second stage and I
didn’t know better, I would have thought that there happen to be no fires at
the moment.

Normally, I’d just shrug and move on, but in this case the misunderstanding
could put people in actual danger. Until the real-time data gets loaded, this
should be in some sort of obviously nonfunctional state.

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dragonwriter
Here's one from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention
(CalFire) that, you know, actually shows the fires, without a significant
delay. (At least, it showed right up for me, unlike the one linked to the
headline here.)

[https://fire.ca.gov/imapdata/index.html](https://fire.ca.gov/imapdata/index.html)

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vondur
This should be linked. Much better than the currently linked site.

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duskwuff
The linked site has a lot more data than the CalFire site. CalFire just shows
a single marker for each fire -- and not even for all the fires currently
burning.

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jacobolus
Let me also recommend Jeremy Ashkenas’s notebooks,

[https://observablehq.com/@jashkenas/california-
fires](https://observablehq.com/@jashkenas/california-fires) (from last year)

[https://observablehq.com/@jashkenas/california-smoke-
forecas...](https://observablehq.com/@jashkenas/california-smoke-forecast)

~~~
jashkenas
Thanks for linking!

For a longer example of how the notebooks can display fire perimeters as they
grow over time, here's a direct link to the Camp Fire that burned Paradise
last year:

[https://observablehq.com/@jashkenas/california-
fires?year=20...](https://observablehq.com/@jashkenas/california-
fires?year=2018&fire=Camp)

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NightMKoder
I've had better luck with this map:
[https://tinyurl.com/sonomacountymap](https://tinyurl.com/sonomacountymap) .
Found via the Sonoma/Napa CalFire twitter account:
[https://twitter.com/CALFIRELNU](https://twitter.com/CALFIRELNU) .

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cft
"The high severity and acreage fires commonly seen today are driven by more
extreme weather and build-up of fuel from our ongoing fire suppression
activities."

If you watch this video
[https://youtu.be/nb2m8KKuwxk](https://youtu.be/nb2m8KKuwxk) , the bright
light goes out, and then we immediately see a big arc and explosion to the
left. It looks like an electric problem. It turned out that the light was
above a geothermal power station, plugged to PG&E grid. Even PG&E itself
admitted that they were the cause of the latest Kincade fire, too, besides the
fires that burned Paradise and part of Santa Rosa.

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alexmingoia
This is a better map of the Kincade Fire (Northern California wine country)
that is updated multiple times a day using satellite imaging to determine hot
spots. The red triangles are hot spots:

[https://mappingsupport.com/p2/gissurfer.php?center=38.597554...](https://mappingsupport.com/p2/gissurfer.php?center=38.597554,-122.724152&zoom=11&basemap=ESRI_aerial_clarity&overlay=VIIRS_24_hours,MODIS_24_hours,ESRI_roads_and_labels&txtfile=https://mappingsupport.com/p2/special_maps/disaster/USA_wildland_fire.txt)

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mareko
I've found the maps based on satellite data to be the most informative as they
show you where the fire is actively burning and not just the permimeter.
Here's a good one for California:

[https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/afm/data/activefiremaps/cgb2019300_1...](https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/afm/data/activefiremaps/cgb2019300_1500.jpg)

Hoping for the best and sending best wishes for all those affected!

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lacker
The title says “live” but the page itself says “updated at most twice daily”.

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iCarrot
The page's title itself says "real-time".

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flyGuyOnTheSly
What if you released a live fire map app for the world, and hong kong
protesters started using it to communicate to others where police are located
(fire inside city = police).

While other hong kong people also used it to point out where actual fires are
located.

Imagine the political shitstorm when Apple tries to ban _that_ app!

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ronnier
Are there any studies to see what percentage of these are intentionally
started, if any?

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rockdiesel
> updated up to twice daily

Far from ‘live’

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fernly
n.b. as of 1600 hrs 27 Oct 2019, the fire should be visible as a large area
between Geyserville and Middletown, with a much larger evacuation area from
there West to the coast at Bodega Bay.

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linusnext
So unusable for those of us without power and spotty LTE coverage.

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billfruit
I wish something similar was available for floods.

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sabujp
there's a fire in milpitas right now, doesn't show up

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tpmx
Edit: Fire is bad. That's all.

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brianwawok
The trees are going to eventually burn one way or another. If nothing else
lightning will do it.

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Merrill
A good step would be to cut down and destroy every eucalyptus tree in CA and
make it illegal to harbor the species. It is an invasive species from
Australia and should not exist in North America. It has shredding bark which
ignites, breaks loose, and flaming embers are carried long distances spreading
the fire more quickly than native species.

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StudentStuff
Flammable roof types should also be banned, when embers land on a roof the
last thing it should start is a fire!

