How Often Wildfire Data Updates in Canada

FireRadar checks the main wildfire data pipeline every hour

FireRadar's main wildfire ingestion workflow is scheduled once per hour. A successful run checks connected direct provincial and territorial sources and refreshes the current data state. That schedule controls when FireRadar looks for new information. It does not mean every wildfire authority publishes a new record every hour.

• A source can publish several changes between FireRadar checks, or publish no change for many hours.
• A newly ingested record can still contain an older source update time if the responsible agency has not changed that record.
• FireRadar does not manufacture a newer official timestamp simply because it fetched the source recently.

The timestamp you are looking at matters

Wildfire data can contain several different dates. FireRadar keeps those meanings separate so a recent system refresh is not confused with a recent official incident update.

• First reported describes when the source says a fire was discovered, created, or first reported.
• Source last updated describes when the responsible data source says the record or feed changed, when that timestamp is available.
• FireRadar ingestion describes when FireRadar last fetched or stored the record. It is not presented as the official incident update time.
• Page generated describes when a server-rendered summary was produced. It does not make the underlying source data newer.

Freshness checks protect the public map when automation stops

FireRadar publishes current map snapshots after successful processing and applies freshness limits before the browser is redirected to a static snapshot. If a snapshot is too old or its manifest cannot be trusted, the direct-delivery gate falls back to the canonical map response instead of treating stale data as current. An independent snapshot watchdog also checks the public snapshot several times per hour.

Smoke, satellite, and air-quality layers have different clocks

Not every FireRadar layer follows the same update cycle. The ECCC FireWork smoke forecast is model guidance based on forecast cycles, NASA FIRMS hotspots depend on satellite observations and source availability, and AQHI observations follow their own monitoring feeds. These layers should be interpreted using their own valid times rather than the timestamp of an official wildfire incident.

• The FireWork smoke page shows the model cycle and the valid hour represented by the selected forecast frame.
• A satellite hotspot time represents a thermal detection, not the creation time of an official wildfire incident.
• AQHI is an air-quality health indicator and should not be treated as a wildfire incident timestamp.

Why FireRadar and an official map can briefly differ

Two maps can be correct at different moments in the publishing chain. An agency may update its public viewer before its downloadable feed changes, FireRadar may be between scheduled checks, a cache may still be within its freshness window, or a source may revise a record after an earlier publication. For emergency decisions, always use the responsible official authority and local emergency information.