How long did the Biesterfeld fire last?

It burned between 30 March 2021 and 30 March 2021: 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 1,416 hectares (14.2 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Ransom (1,408 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached -0.6 °C, humidity dropped to 40 % and gusts hit 73 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, 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 · 2021-03-30 → 2021-03-30

Biesterfeld Fire, March 2021 Ransom

Out · last detection 30 Mar 2021, 08:55 UTC

The fire started on 30 March 2021 in Ransom, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,416 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 11th largest in North Dakota since 2016 (of 27 with a page). Number 188 in United States in 2021, of 385.

The power measured by the satellite is low (12.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 1,416ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: 1day; 30 Mar 2021 – 30 Mar 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 30 Mar; 2021
Heat detections: 27; in a single hotspot: 12 MW
Danger at start: 15; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 138MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Mar30 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

30 Mar 2021 · 138 MW · 27

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

The weather it burned in

-1°high

73km/h · peak gust

40%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 6 Apr.

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 0.9% of the area of London (14 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

Ransom where it started

1,408 ha reached on 30 Mar

0.6 %

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)
30 Mar	-0.6 °C	40 %	73 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
31 Mar after	1.2 °C	30 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
1 Apr after	13.7 °C	20 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
2 Apr after	20.8 °C	22 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
3 Apr after	22.5 °C	10 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
4 Apr after	21.1 °C	15 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
5 Apr after	22.3 °C	20 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
6 Apr after	10.5 °C	34 %	48 km/h	2.3 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Mar 2021

After · 6 Apr 2021

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 · 27Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Biesterfeld fire last?: It burned between 30 March 2021 and 30 March 2021: 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 1,416 hectares (14.2 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Ransom (1,408 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached -0.6 °C, humidity dropped to 40 % and gusts hit 73 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, 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

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 27 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