BlazeRadar — Updates

Analytics is now your choice

• PostHog now stays off until you allow it in Analytics choices. You can keep it off or withdraw at any time; GPC and Do Not Track also keep it off. The maps work either way.
• We stopped new session replay and automatic click/form capture. Optional analytics now measures page categories and map-layer choices with limited data. Earlier entries below describe the practices at their publication dates, including features that have since changed.
• Privacy policy v2.0 explains current collection, launch requests sent to the parent inbox, retention and your rights. Terms v1.1 clarify API scope and the forthcoming mobile app. We will disclose the actual app permissions and data practices before release.

A correction to our legal pages

• The postal address in our privacy policy and Terms of Use listed the wrong mailbox number at our Atlanta address — the one belonging to our parent company, Vibewright Labs LLC, rather than the one registered to Vibetronics LLC. It now reads Ste 220 #580353 in both documents. Nothing else in either document changed, including the effective dates

We added analytics — and updated the privacy policy first

• Earlier today our privacy policy said “no analytics.” That's no longer true, and we're telling you directly rather than quietly editing a legal page: blazeradar.org now uses PostHog product analytics — pageviews, interactions, session replays, and which map layers get used — so we can see what helps and what doesn't
• The guardrails, spelled out in privacy policy v1.1: everything you type is masked in replays and the contact page is excluded entirely; IP addresses are discarded at ingestion (city-level location only); nothing is used for advertising or sold; browsers sending a Global Privacy Control or Do-Not-Track signal are opted out automatically; and there's a one-click opt-out for everyone else
• The mobile app remains analytics-free

Terms of Use published

• Completing today's legal pages: our Terms of Use are now live alongside the privacy policy. The part that matters most is right at the top, in plain language: BlazeRadar is an information tool, not an emergency alert system — never use it to decide whether you're safe, and always follow official orders
• Also worth knowing: the terms contain no arbitration clause and no class-action waiver. If we ever wrong you, you keep your ordinary day in court. We think that's the right posture for a safety-adjacent product
• The full data-source list (NIFC/WFIGS, NOAA/NWS, NOAA HMS, EPA AirNow, the U.S. Drought Monitor, Genasys/Zonehaven, FEMA, InciWeb, NASA FIRMS) is credited in the terms, matching what's actually on the map today

A contact form — and the privacy policy that had to come first

• You can now write to us at blazeradar.org/contact (or plain old hello@blazeradar.org). Messages go straight to the team's email and internal chat — they are not stored on our servers, by design
• When we removed the old email waitlist a few days ago, we said collecting anything personal would wait until a privacy policy was published. Keeping that promise: our privacy policy is now live. The short version is that BlazeRadar collects almost nothing — no location tracking, no accounts, no analytics, no ads, nothing sold — and the policy spells out the little that remains

A corrupted fire perimeter, caught and filtered

• While reviewing the new air-quality view we noticed the official WFIGS feed serving the Ross fire's perimeter with stray vertices — a polygon reaching from South Dakota to Texas for a fire that is actually about 84,000 acres. It drew on our map as an enormous false burned-area sliver
• Perimeters with physically impossible extents (wider than any US fire in history) are now dropped at the source with a log entry, the same way we filter the evacuation feed's test data. The fire's location marker still shows; a wrong perimeter is worse than none while the feed self-corrects

Air quality gets its own section

• New: blazeradar.org/air — the live map opened in an air-quality view. Current AQI for 700+ EPA AirNow reporting areas, drawn as dots in EPA's official Air Quality Index colors, with wildfire smoke plumes, active fires, and fire-weather alerts kept in the same picture — because where the smoke is coming from is half the story
• Tap any dot for the reading: AQI, category, and the pollutant driving it, plus today's and tomorrow's official forecast, when it was observed, and which state, local, or tribal agency owns the measurement
• The same layer is available as an “Air quality (AirNow)” toggle on the main map. Readings refresh every 15 minutes
• Honesty note, straight from EPA's data guidelines: AirNow observations are preliminary and not validated — every popup and the page itself say so. For regulatory-grade data, EPA's Air Quality System is the source of record

Smoke plumes are live

• The smoke layer previewed earlier today is now on the map for everyone: observed smoke plumes from NOAA's Hazard Mapping System, where satellite analysts outline actual smoke several times a day and class it light, medium, or heavy. Darker grey means denser smoke; tap a plume for its density, satellite, and when it was observed
• It's the same plume picture you may know from EPA's Fire & Smoke Map, refreshed on our map every 30 minutes, and it's a toggle like every other layer

Fire-weather alerts you can actually see, drought context, and wind at every fire

• Red Flag Warnings and Fire Weather Watches now draw on the map reliably. The National Weather Service usually issues these alerts against forecast zones without attaching the zone's shape, and our map silently skipped those — on the day we checked, all seven active fire-weather alerts in the country were invisible. We now resolve each alert's zones to their real boundaries, so watches (orange) and warnings (magenta) paint the areas they cover. When NWS upgrades a watch to a warning, the map follows within five minutes
• New toggle: a drought backdrop from the U.S. Drought Monitor (NDMC, USDA, and NOAA), using the standard D0–D4 color ramp. It's off by default — it's context for why fire danger is elevated, not an operational layer — and it updates with each weekly USDM release
• Tap any fire and its popup now shows the wind at that location — direction, speed, and gusts when forecast — straight from the NWS hourly forecast, labeled with its source
• In review with the team: a smoke-plume layer from NOAA's Hazard Mapping System. It's built and being previewed internally before it ships
• Layout fix, same day: the layer toggles moved to the bottom-right corner — the growing layer list had started hiding behind the status panel

Removing test data from the evacuation layer

• Our evacuation zones come from Genasys/Zonehaven, whose public feed turns out to serve their own sandbox and training tenants alongside real county data. Fifteen of those test polygons were reaching our map — fourteen in Egypt, one in Spain — including one carrying a “Go Now” evacuation status. They were never in the United States and never real, but they were drawn like everything else, and they were counted in the homepage zone total. They are now filtered out at the source
• A related safeguard: if a data feed answers with an error that looks like an empty result, we used to publish that emptiness as though it were good news — a map showing no evacuation zones reads as “nothing to worry about.” The live feeds now refuse an implausible collapse to zero and keep serving the last known-good data instead, and every layer reports its own age so we can tell fresh data from stale
• The safety notice on the full-screen map is now part of the page itself rather than something drawn after the map finishes loading. If the map ever fails to load, the notice stays put
• The “notify me” signup for the mobile app has been replaced with a plain email link. We were collecting addresses before publishing a privacy policy, which we should not have been doing. No address was ever stored — the file was empty — and the form is gone until the policy is published

A new look for blazeradar.org

• The site now wears fire colors: dark by default, with ember-gradient accents — and it still honors your device's light-mode preference
• New on the homepage: a live status band with real counts of active fires, perimeters, evacuation zones, weather alerts, open shelters, and satellite hotspots — pulled straight from the live feed, with an honest "updated X min ago" timestamp
• Layer colors are now consistent everywhere: the same orange, red, amber, magenta, blue, and yellow mean the same things on the homepage, the map legend, and the map itself

Clear safety framing on the live map

• The live map now says plainly what BlazeRadar is: an information tool, not an emergency authority — with a standing reminder to verify conditions with local authorities and follow official evacuation orders
• The same guidance rides every map surface, including the full-screen Live Map, and stays visible even if a data feed goes quiet
• Site polish: typography now loads properly everywhere, the footer credits BlazeRadar's builder — Vibetronics LLC — and navigation is down to the three pages that matter: Home, Live Map, Updates

Public launch — the new front page

• blazeradar.org is fully redesigned as a public site: a clear overview of what BlazeRadar does, built around the live map
• The live wildfire map is now embedded right on the homepage — explore fires, perimeters, evacuation zones, shelters, and fire-weather alerts from any browser, no app required
• Mobile app coming soon — sign up on the homepage to get notified when it's ready for your phone
• Reworked around official public sources (NIFC/WFIGS, NWS, FEMA, Genasys/Zonehaven), with the reminder to always verify with local authorities

blazeradar.org is the front door

• This site now lives at its permanent address: blazeradar.org (www works too)
• Overview, Live Map, and Updates all serve from the main domain on Cloudflare's global edge
• The production API stays at api.blazeradar.org — nothing changes for the mobile app

The historical archive is built

Current website note: archive storage is not a public playback feature. Records reflect successful feed polls and do not establish a complete record of every source change.

• BlazeRadar now keeps history — live in production: every acreage change, containment update, evacuation-zone status change, and fire-weather alert is recorded as it happens
• Daily raw snapshots of every fire and perimeter — the foundation for per-fire update feeds and fire-growth playback
• API: incidents and perimeters now carry IRWIN identifiers, so consumers can track the same fire across refreshes

Map update 2 — signal over noise

• Burned-area perimeters redrawn: bold red fill with a dark outline, so where the fire has been reads at a glance
• Evacuation zones stand out: heavier dashed borders, and urgency now drives opacity — Level 3 “Go Now” zones are boldest
• Small dead fires auto-prune from the map (fully contained under 50 acres, or tiny and stale) — a “Minor fires” toggle keeps them one click away
• Red Flag Warnings and Fire Weather Watches now render as map layers (magenta / orange)
• New layer control: toggle perimeters, zones, fires, alerts, and shelters individually
• Every fire popup shows when its record was last updated (“updated 3 h ago”)

Map update 1 — active fires pop

• Fully contained fires turn grey so active threats stand out (the mobile app dims them the same way)
• Fire markers are now flame icons that scale with acreage — a 40,000-acre fire no longer looks like a campfire
• Full-screen Live Map added as its own tab on this site

BlazeRadar goes live

• Official name locked in; blazeradar.org registered
• Production API live with TLS at api.blazeradar.org — five data layers, full-US coverage, refreshed every 2–15 minutes
• This site launched with the live map embedded

What we're exploring

Smoke plumes, EPA AirNow observations and NASA FIRMS satellite hotspots are already available on the map. The air-quality view brings smoke and air observations together.

The remaining ideas from the earlier roadmap are:

• Smoke-movement and drift-direction views
• Per-fire update feeds showing reported acreage and containment changes
• Fire-growth playback using the archive

These are ideas, not announced features or release commitments. Their scope and timing have not been set. Tell us which would help you and how you would use it.