Wildfires can potentially spread fastest when they tear through areas of dry vegetation, [while] moisture can give firefighting crews time to contain the blaze. Because dryness is such a critical driver of wildfires, a team of scientists at the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) is producing maps in real time of the moisture content of vegetation across the United States, as well as adjacent areas of Canada and Mexico. The maps, which include both living and dead vegetation (or fuel, as the wildfire community calls it), are updated hourly to daily, depending on the location. They are available to view on a dedicated NSF NCAR webpage. To create the maps, a team of NSF NCAR fire experts, meteorologists, and machine learning specialists drew on advanced weather models as well as observations of land cover and atmosphere, including data from two NASA and NOAA satellite instruments…