A very sobering map
 

We are getting some light snowfall and possible moisture relief from the record breaking hot dry summer/fall which can only be described a disaster Or perhaps labeled "When the West caught fire"

Current fire map US
https://i.imgur.com/b81aSvQ.png

It has been insane this summer with wild fires.

That's a scary map, Kev.

The Cameron Peak fire in northern Colorado is now the largest wildfire in CO history. I saw some photos of it taken at night from the town of Loveland to the east.

And today I heard they are evacuating people from the Loveland area, and are calling for hay for all the rescued horses and cattle.

Very windy today. Not good.

My daughter and son in law live in Ft Collins near the CSU campus (thankfully in no danger ) But she says the smoke has been awful and she now can see the glow from the Horsetooth area west of her.

Very windy here yesterday but calmer today, hopeful that calm will reach Co. tomorrow

..........

I'm in north Ft Collins and the smoke and ash have been a daily thing for a couple of months now depending on the wind direction. We have friends who are or have been evacuated from Glacier View and now the Horsetooth area. We don't even know how many homes have been lost so far, and it isn't over yet.

Here's a pic I took while walking the dog a couple of days ago when the smoke was blowing south of us. The plume carries on out over the prairie as far as you can see.
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...1d18e17c_b.jpg

All these fires can't hold land management accountable for the fires.

...I would love to discuss land management and how it relates to the increasing fire activity but I expect it’s too political for this forum....I hope everyone impacted by any fire or any other disaster has the best possible outcome...

This year is a record breaker for fires.

Right now the East Troublesome Fire in Colorado is 11 miles west of our family cabin and moving east. Hope all these fires get contained or rained out.

I was surprised to see how many fires the OP's map showed were currently burning in Texas (looks like ~ 18 fires). When I went to Texas A&M's map of current Texas fires, it shows only 3 fires burning in the state of Texas today.

I wonder why the difference?

I don't know unless different sites have different size qualifications or different reporting resources ?

I checked the inciweb sight and it shows no fires in Texas , but that may be that the agency handling the fire, does not report to the inciweb sight?

This is the web sight I got the map off of in my OP

xhttps://www.fireweatheravalanche.org/fire/

Horrifying. I'm worried for my friends in San Francisco, and Texas, but of course my nephew iand family in Melbourne Oz, and for the millions of acres turning to ash in South America.

That's just so sad?

Kev, good thread, but I wonder if this map is a little misleading. I'm not sure what all the icons are really showing, but based on looking at some local sources like CalFire, it may be showing all fires which happened over a time period (not sure what that would be) rather than current fires? I'm not sure. Maybe it's just the size at which the icons render and the zoom level.

For example, here is CalFire's current incident map.

https://i.imgur.com/iQFRht5.png https://i.imgur.com/ha0SA9h.png

This shows an icon for any current fire, and an outline and fill around acres burned. I'm isolating this to the western US, so the scale isn't the same, but it looks a lot less overwhelming in this view. And here we're seeing fires with 80%-90% containment along with fires with less contain, and fires which have been out for a while. They are showing data for fires outside their jurisdiction like the Red Salmon Complex fire in the north of California, so it feels fairly comprehensive.

Believe me as a resident I in no way want to minimize the situation. We had a tragic fire locally which affected friends and neighbors in the Santa Cruz area, and we know people who lost home like my neighbor in Tahoe who lost 2 homes in the Napa area. But the data visualization really matters in terms of impact. I think the CalFire visualization is a more accurate rendering of the massive effect on acreage in California.

Thoughts?

Good question and so I went back and looked. It is an interactive map and You are correct it is a combination map. The mustard color icons are listed as "Active" and the red are listed as "Status Unknown" but have older start dates ? but does not say if they are contained or actually out ??? And I could not figure out how to show just "Active"
At the zoom level I took the screen shot (to show the entire US) the icons are so big relatively that you can't get an accurate count if you zoom in it gets better

I am guessing your map is more accurate for current active.