How long did the Black Range Complex fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 July 2016 to 16 July 2016 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 July 2016 to 11 July 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 1,466 hectares (14.7 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Catron (1,454 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 · 2016-07-10 → 2016-07-16

Black Range Complex, July 2016 Catron

Out · last detection 16 Jul 2016, 09:13 UTC

The fire started on 10 July 2016 in Catron, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,466 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 96th largest in New Mexico since 2016 (of 204 with a page). Number 201 in United States in 2016, of 475.

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Burnt area: 1,466ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: 7days; 10 Jul 2016 – 16 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 10 Jul; 2016
Heat detections: 85; in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start: 37; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 106MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Jul16 Jul

Play back 16 Jul 2016

How it evolved, day by day

10 Jul 11 Jul 12 Jul 13 Jul 14 Jul 16 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

30°high

54km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 17 Jul.

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 (15 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

Catron where it started

1,454 ha reached on 10 Jul

0.1 %

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)
10 Jul	28.8 °C	16 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
11 Jul	28.4 °C	13 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
12 Jul	29.0 °C	11 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
13 Jul	30.1 °C	12 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
14 Jul	30.1 °C	10 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
15 Jul	28.9 °C	11 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
16 Jul	28.2 °C	15 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
17 Jul after	28.5 °C	18 %	38 km/h	1.1 mm	High 28

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Jul 2016

After · 23 Jul 2016

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 · 85Every 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 Black Range Complex fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 July 2016 to 16 July 2016 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 July 2016 to 11 July 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 1,466 hectares (14.7 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Catron (1,454 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 really happened?

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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 11 July 2016 to 11 July 2016. 85 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