How long did the Bernard fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 September 2020 to 22 September 2020 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 September 2020 to 8 September 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 589 hectares (5.9 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire entered 2 counties: Kootenai (370 ha, 0.1 %); Bonner (216 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 27.3 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.

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 · 2020-09-08 → 2020-09-22

Bernard Fire, September 2020 Kootenai, Bonner

Out · last detection 22 Sept 2020, 09:40 UTC

The fire started on 8 September 2020 in Kootenai, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 589 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the 310th largest in Idaho since 2016 (of 379 with a page). Number 372 in United States in 2020, of 441.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ridge Creek · 2023 Surprise Creek · 2018 Sunset · 2025

Burnt area: 589ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: 15days; 8 Sept 2020 – 22 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; counties
Started on: 8 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 177; in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Danger at start: 32; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 74MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 22 Sept 2020

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Sept22 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

8 Sept 10 Sept 12 Sept 14 Sept 16 Sept 18 Sept 22 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

27°high

41km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.3 mm on 24 Sept.

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 0.4% of the area of London (5.9 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 town

Kootenai where it started

370 ha reached on 8 Sept

0.1 %
Bonner

216 ha reached on 9 Sept

0.0 %

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

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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
8 Sept	17.5 °C	20 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 Sept	24.9 °C	14 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Sept	27.3 °C	14 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
11 Sept	26.7 °C	16 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
12 Sept	24.4 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
13 Sept	24.3 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
14 Sept	19.9 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
15 Sept	21.7 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
16 Sept	23.7 °C	29 %	14 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
17 Sept	24.8 °C	26 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
18 Sept	22.2 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
19 Sept	15.7 °C	66 %	41 km/h	4.9 mm	Very low 2
20 Sept	17.7 °C	48 %	41 km/h	0.4 mm	Low 6
21 Sept	20.8 °C	33 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
22 Sept	19.5 °C	36 %	33 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 17
23 Sept after	19.7 °C	35 %	49 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 20
24 Sept after	15.6 °C	46 %	65 km/h	8.3 mm	Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Sept 2020

After · 29 Sept 2020

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.

Detections table · 177Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.

⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.

Date and time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

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Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bernard fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 September 2020 to 22 September 2020 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 September 2020 to 8 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 589 hectares (5.9 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire entered 2 counties: Kootenai (370 ha, 0.1 %); Bonner (216 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 27.3 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.
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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
NIFC · Fire maps ↗

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.

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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?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 September 2020 to 8 September 2020. 177 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.

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