How long did the Babo Fire last?

It burned between 14 November 2018 and 14 November 2018: 1 day, according to the start date recorded by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) and the heat detections seen by satellite.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 1,030 hectares (10.3 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Santa Cruz (1,044 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 12.2 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class Moderate.

Where does this data come from?

From the official burnt perimeter of United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC, public domain), NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of United States. It is not an official report.

US · United States · 2018-11-14 → 2018-11-14

Babo Fire, November 2018 Santa Cruz

Out · last measured on 14 Nov 2018

The fire started on 14 November 2018 in Santa Cruz, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,030 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 220th largest in Arizona since 2016 (of 380 with a page). Number 310 in United States in 2018, of 511.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ranch · 2017 San Rafael · 2022 Flying R · 2017 Ranch · 2025

We have the official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC) for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by county is there.

Burnt area: 1,030ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: 1day; 14 Nov 2018 – 14 Nov 2018
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 14 Nov; 2018
Danger at start: 21; Moderate · FWI index

The weather it burned in

12°high

47km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (10 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each county

Santa Cruz where it started

1,044 ha

0.3 %

Burnt area inside each county, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area0.38 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.38 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Danger (FWI)
14 Nov	12.2 °C	19 %	47 km/h	Moderate 21
15 Nov after	17.2 °C	17 %	26 km/h	Moderate 16
16 Nov after	19.0 °C	15 %	25 km/h	Moderate 18
17 Nov after	18.4 °C	17 %	26 km/h	Moderate 19
18 Nov after	18.3 °C	15 %	21 km/h	Moderate 19
19 Nov after	19.1 °C	18 %	18 km/h	Moderate 18
20 Nov after	19.5 °C	21 %	34 km/h	High 22
21 Nov after	18.7 °C	30 %	28 km/h	Moderate 18
22 Nov after	13.9 °C	44 %	34 km/h	Moderate 16
23 Nov after	17.4 °C	22 %	20 km/h	Moderate 14
24 Nov after	17.7 °C	24 %	41 km/h	Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

↔

Before · 7 Nov 2018

After · 21 Nov 2018

Before After

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Babo Fire last?: It burned between 14 November 2018 and 14 November 2018: 1 day, according to the start date recorded by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) and the heat detections seen by satellite.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 1,030 hectares (10.3 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Santa Cruz (1,044 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 12.2 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?: From the official burnt perimeter of United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC, public domain), NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of United States. It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 911 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
NIFC · Fire maps ↗

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 911.

How we know this

Perimeter: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), official.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter is official and in the public domain. For past years it comes from MTBS (Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity), run by the U.S. Geological Survey and the USDA Forest Service, which map it on Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery. For the current and last year it comes from WFIGS at the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC): incident perimeters mapped by fire crews, aircraft and imagery. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. County boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Public Domain). The area per county is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from official figures.

Where it burned