Fire season has begun. These apps and sites will help you spot wildfires and avoid trouble.

Not sure where to quickly find out if a wildfire is headed your way and might force you to evacuate your home?

Tap an app button on your phone, or open a web browser. There’s a tremendous amount of wildfire information online, and some key tools have recently gotten better and easier to use.

And now is the time to get up to speed. Fire season is off to an early start, triggered by inland heat waves like the one that started in San Diego County on Friday. Five wildfires broke out in June and July, and at least two of them led to evacuations.

The risk of wildfires will remain high across inland areas throughout August and will become an issue from the desert to the sea in September, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

It’s unclear what will happen when the Santa Ana winds begin blowing in late September or early October. But the county could experience a fiery downside of Hilary, a rare and unexpected tropical storm that drenched Southern California last August.

Hilary’s rains and the previous wet winter helped suppress wildfires last fall. But this also led to the explosive growth of vegetation that’s now drying out, providing huge amounts of fuel for wildfires, forecasters say.

The good news is that the public can now more easily see im...