Kentucky Wildfire, Smoke, and Air Quality Map

Fire season and landscape

Kentucky declares two fire hazard seasons, mid February through April and October through mid December, matching the leaf-off windows when hardwood slopes burn most readily. Fall drought years are the more active of the two in the eastern coalfields. Outside fire season, flooding in the state's steep eastern watersheds is often the more pressing hazard.

The Daniel Boone National Forest follows the Cumberland Plateau's cliffline country down eastern Kentucky, steep, dissected terrain where fires climb fast and access is slow. The state's east is hollow-and-ridge coalfield landscape, while the center and west roll gently through farm and woodland to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Flash flooding in the eastern watersheds is a recurring hazard alongside fire.

• Most of Kentucky's wildfire acreage burns inside the two declared hazard seasons; the fire weather outlook layer shows which days inside those windows carry elevated risk.
• Hotspot detections on the Daniel Boone National Forest's steep clifflines read differently than flat-country burns, since fire there runs upslope; the 24-hour layer is the freshest view.
• Eastern Kentucky's flood-prone hollows respond to heavy rain in hours rather than days; the river gauge layer covers the Kentucky, Big Sandy, and Licking basins.