Maryland Wildfire, Smoke, and Air Quality Map

Fire season and landscape

Fire activity concentrates in spring, roughly March through May, when cured leaf litter dries out before green-up, with a second window in drought-year falls. In most recent summers, smoke transported from Canadian fires has affected air quality statewide, at times reaching unhealthy ranges from Cumberland to Ocean City. Flooding from tropical remnants and nor'easters rounds out the hazard picture.

Western Maryland holds the state's most fire-prone terrain, including Savage River State Forest on the Allegheny Plateau and Green Ridge State Forest in the Ridge and Valley country of eastern Allegany County. The center of the state is heavily developed, while the Eastern Shore mixes farmland with large tidal marshes that carry their own phragmites fire regime. River flooding along the Potomac and tidal flooding around the Chesapeake are as much a part of Maryland's hazard profile as fire.

• Spring litter fires in the western ridges are usually small and short-lived, so the 24-hour satellite hotspot layer often catches them before a mapped perimeter exists.
• Smoke from Canadian fires reaches Maryland several times in a typical summer, and the smoke and air quality forecast layers show whether a plume is aloft or mixing down to the surface.
• The Potomac responds quickly to heavy rain in its mountain headwaters, and the river gauge layer shows that rise hours before it works downstream past Point of Rocks.