Nevada Wildfire, Smoke, and Air Quality Map

Fire season and landscape

Fire activity typically runs June through September, with the biggest range-fire years arriving a season or two after a wet winter builds the grass crop. Wind events along the Sierra Front near Reno can push fires hard into fall, and smoke from California fires often defines Nevada's air quality even when the state's own fires are quiet.

Most of Nevada is federal land, dominated by broad BLM sagebrush basins and ranges, with the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest scattered across the higher mountains and Great Basin National Park in the east. The characteristic hazard is wind-driven fire in cheatgrass and sagebrush, which spreads quickly and covers large acreage in open country.

• Cheatgrass fires in the Great Basin can grow tens of thousands of acres in a day, so the 24-hour satellite hotspot layer often leads the mapped perimeters.
• Smoke over Reno and Tahoe is frequently imported from California, and the smoke and air quality forecast layers show whether it is inbound or clearing.
• A drought map that looks favorable can still precede a bad fire year here, because a wet winter grows the grass that carries the next summer's fires.