Over the past decade, new dangers have emerged for riders venturing into the North American wilderness. Or maybe they're not new, but they certainly seem to be getting worse. I'm talking about wildfires, and now app maker onX has announced an update to help keep riders safe.
For those of you who don't know about onX, the company develops a GPS mapping app for mobile devices. The app is popular among hunters because it helps organize property boundaries and other useful map data. It has also branched out into the ATV/adventure bike market, where it has served them well. And now it's potentially becoming even more useful by adding a map layer that provides hourly updates on the location of active wildfires and wildfire smoke.
It's important to note that the information in the app may not be 100% accurate. The Active Wildfires layer shares data from the National Joint Fire Center, which may not know exactly where fires stopped and started, or even if there are any fires in the first place. To help a little, onX also adds information about so-called hotspots. This is satellite data provided by NASA that updates every hour and shows areas where high temperatures have been detected. You can overlay this on a map to get a better idea of where to avoid. In previous versions of the app, the data was only updated once every 24 hours, which was obviously not very useful.
onX's new wildfire smoke layer shows you where wildfire smoke is drifting and how thick it is, updated hourly from NOAA weather information. You can use this layer to avoid areas that may be dangerous to travel in, even when there is no fire.
Overall, it can be very useful. In 2022, our plans to cycle in Newfoundland were almost cancelled due to the wildfires. In 2023, our cycle to James Bay was cancelled due to the wildfires (resulting in a very dangerous cycle when coming out of the forest). In 2024, we were considering a trip through Labrador, but this was also cancelled due to the fires. If you are planning to cycle through the forests of North America these days, you need information like this. It's available in the onX Backcountry, onX Offroad and onX Hunt apps. Find out more here.