Transatlantic Fire Resource Guide
Forecast Information
Earth.nullschool.net – Global Wind and Weather Visualization
Operator: Cameron Beccario (independent developer, Japan)
Geographic Focus: Global
Tags: Map · Model Output · Real-Time Monitoring · Public Outreach
Access: Free, public
Earth.nullschool.net is an elegantly rendered interactive globe displaying animated wind flow fields at selectable atmospheric levels (surface through 10 hPa) derived from GFS model output, updated every three hours, with additional overlays for temperature, relative humidity, total precipitable water, ocean currents, wave height, and chemical tracers including CO, SO₂, and aerosol optical depth from GEOS-5. The surface wind animation is particularly intuitive for visualizing large-scale wind patterns affecting fire spread — including synoptic-scale flow driving offshore wind events (Santa Ana, Diablo winds), foehn conditions in Europe, and smoke transport corridors — in a visually compelling and immediately interpretable format. While not a precision operational tool, earth.nullschool provides an unmatched global overview of atmospheric dynamics that is widely used by fire educators, communicators, and situational awareness briefers to convey wind and smoke transport conditions to broad audiences.
Meteograma Pyrocast
Operator: CONAF – Corporación Nacional Forestal (Chilean National Forestry Corporation)
Geographic Focus: Global (with operational focus on Chile and South America)
Tags: Fire Weather · Active Fire Detection · Index · Point Forecast · Archive · Operational · Spanish
Access: Free, public
Meteograma Pyrocast is a fire weather forecasting tool developed by CONAF that generates point-location meteograms for any location worldwide using both GFS and ECMWF IFS model data, displaying key meteorological parameters alongside the Hot-Dry-Windy Index (HDWI) — a composite fire weather index combining temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed into a single fire danger metric. The platform uniquely supports hindcast analysis, allowing users to reproduce past model forecasts for post-fire event reconstruction and validation — a capability rarely available in public-facing fire weather tools. Integration of NASA FIRMS active fire detection data further enriches the platform's situational picture, enabling users to correlate observed fire activity with concurrent and forecast fire weather conditions. For fire weather forecasters, fire behavior analysts, and researchers — particularly across Latin America — Pyrocast offers an accessible, multilayered point-forecast tool that combines operational forecasting, post-event analysis, and satellite fire intelligence in a single interface.
National GACC Website Portal
Operator: National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) / Geographic Area Coordination Centers
Geographic Focus: United States (national; ten regional GACCs)
Tags: Fire Danger · Forecast · Decision Support · Operational · Seasonal Outlook
Access: Free, public
The national GACC portal serves as the web gateway to all ten U.S. Geographic Area Coordination Centers — Alaska, Eastern Area, Great Basin, Northern California, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern Area, Southern California, and Southwest — providing links to each GACC's Predictive Services intelligence, weather, fuels/fire danger, and fire potential outlook products, as well as current national and regional preparedness levels. Each GACC produces region-specific fire weather and fire danger products tailored to local fuel types, terrain, and climate patterns that complement the national NICC products with finer geographic resolution and operational context. For fire managers, incident commanders, and resource coordinators, the GACC portal is the authoritative entry point for regionally calibrated situational intelligence — including 7-day outlooks, resource availability summaries, and preparedness level decisions that govern pre-positioning of firefighting assets across the U.S.
NOAA SPC – High-Resolution Ensemble Framework (HREF)
Operator: NOAA Storm Prediction Center (SPC) / Environmental Modeling Center (EMC)
Geographic Focus: Contiguous United States (CONUS)
Tags: Fire Weather · Forecast · Model Output · Probabilistic Forecast · Short-Range
Access: Free, public (experimental)
The HREF viewer provides access to high-resolution ensemble model output from multiple convection-allowing models (CAMs), including probability-matched means, paintball plots, and individual member solutions for parameters such as precipitation, convective initiation, and severe weather indicators. For fire weather applications, the HREF is particularly valuable for forecasting dry and mixed-phase convection — scenarios where lightning reaches the surface without sufficient rainfall to wet fuels, a leading cause of ignition in the western U.S. Its spatial detail and ensemble spread visualization help fire weather meteorologists assess both the likelihood and spatial confidence of lightning-ignition threat in a way that coarser operational models cannot match.
NOAA National Weather Service – Main Portal
Operator: NOAA National Weather Service (NWS)
Geographic Focus: United States, territories, and adjacent waters (national)
Tags: Fire Weather · Fire Danger · Forecast · Public Outreach · Operational
Access: Free, public
Weather.gov is the authoritative U.S. government weather information portal, providing local and national forecasts, active watches/warnings/advisories (including Red Flag Warnings and Fire Weather Watches), satellite and radar imagery, river and flood guidance, aviation weather, and links to all NWS national centers — including the SPC, WPC, and CPC. From a fire science perspective, it serves as the central gateway to spot weather forecast requests, fire weather zone forecasts, and the full suite of NWS fire weather products issued by local forecast offices, which feed directly into incident weather briefings and resource deployment decisions. As the single authoritative government source for life-safety weather information in the U.S., weather.gov is the foundational reference platform for all fire weather operations, from prescribed burn planning to large-incident management.
NOAA National Weather Service – Fire Weather Portal
Operator: NOAA National Weather Service (NWS)
Geographic Focus: United States, territories, and adjacent waters (national)
Tags: Fire Weather · Fire Danger · Forecast · Operational · Decision Support
Access: Free, public
The NWS Fire Weather portal is the fire-specific sub-portal of weather.gov, consolidating direct links to all NWS fire weather operational products — including fire weather zone forecasts (FWF), NFDRS forecasts, Fire Weather Watch and Red Flag Warning products, issued and on-demand spot forecasts, the Fire Weather GIS Viewer, and SPC fire weather outlooks — alongside NIFC Predictive Services intelligence products and CPC medium- to long-range outlooks relevant to fire season planning. Where the main weather.gov portal serves the full range of NWS hazard types and public weather services, this page is purpose-built for fire weather professionals who need rapid, unambiguous navigation directly to fire-relevant products without traversing the broader NWS product catalog. It is best understood as the operational bookmark for fire managers, IMETs, prescribed burn practitioners, and agency fire weather liaisons who work daily within the NWS fire weather product ecosystem and need a single, stable entry point to the complete suite.
SpotWx
Operator: Independent developer (Garth Hoeppner, Manitoba Wildfire Service fire weather meteorologist), hosted in Canada
Geographic Focus: Canada and North America (multiple NWP models with global data availability)
Tags: Fire Weather · Forecast · Model Output · Point Forecast · Short-Range · Operational
Access: Free, public (optional account for saved locations)
URL: https://spotwx.com/
SpotWx was developed by a fire weather meteorologist from Manitoba's Wildfire Service to fill a gap in accessible, transparent point-location weather forecasting tools — providing detailed numerical model output and visualizations for any user-selected coordinates from a wide range of NWP models, going well beyond the condensed surface parameters typically exposed by general weather platforms. The site extracts and presents hourly model data (including ECCC's RDPS and HRDPS, GFS, HRRR, and others) as tabular and graphical meteorograms covering temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, precipitation, and Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) components. For fire weather meteorologists, prescribed burn practitioners, and wildfire analysts, SpotWx is a highly practical tool for quickly generating spot forecasts at any point on the landscape — including remote areas lacking nearby weather stations — and is integrated into the Wildfire Analyst fire behavior modeling platform.
Tropical Tidbits – Forecast Model Viewer
Operator: Levi Cowan (independent developer / meteorologist)
Geographic Focus: Global and regional (U.S., tropics, Atlantic, Pacific, and worldwide domains)
Tags: Fire Weather · Forecast · Model Output · Map · Medium-Range · Operational
Access: Free, public
Tropical Tidbits provides clean, fast-loading forecast model charts from all major global NWP systems — including ECMWF, EC-AIFS, GFS, AI-GFS, CMC/GEM, ICON, and JMA — as well as ensemble products (ECMWF EPS, GEFS, GEPS) and hurricane track models, across a wide range of global and regional domains and meteorological parameters. The site is renowned in the professional meteorology community for its interface efficiency: users can rapidly cycle through multiple models and forecast hours to compare solutions — a critical workflow when assessing divergent model scenarios for fire weather parameters such as offshore wind onset timing, precipitation timing, or synoptic pattern evolution. For fire weather meteorologists and fire behavior analysts requiring quick multi-model comparison without institutional data access, Tropical Tidbits is among the best-designed freely available model chart platforms available.
Windy.com
Operator: Windy.com a.s.
Geographic Focus: Global
Tags: Fire Weather · Forecast · Map · Short-Range · Public Outreach · Operational
Access: Free (core); Windy Premium for extended features
URL: https://windy.com
Windy is one of the most widely used global weather visualization platforms, providing interactive, animated maps of wind, temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, atmospheric pressure, and dozens of additional meteorological parameters drawn from multiple NWP models including ECMWF, GFS, ICON, and AROME, with forecast lead times up to 10–15 days. The platform also integrates smoke and aerosol layers (from ECMWF CAMS), radar composites, lightning detection, and webcam overlays, making it a versatile situational awareness tool for fire practitioners who need a quick, visually intuitive check on surface wind fields, upper-level flow, or approaching precipitation. Its accessibility — requiring no training and available via browser or mobile app — makes Windy the go-to meteorological overview tool for a broad audience from professional fire managers to the public seeking to understand fire weather conditions.