Black River Complex, July 2023 Greenlee, Graham
The fire started on 30 July 2023 in Greenlee, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 991 hectares, spread across 2 counties.
It is the 228th largest in Arizona since 2016 (of 380 with a page). Number 156 in United States in 2023, of 305.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 991ha
- official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
- Duration
- ≈ 10days
- 30 Jul 2023 – 8 Aug 2023
- Counties hit
- 2
- counties
- Started on
- 30 Jul
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 188
- in a single hotspot: 169 MW
- Danger at start
- 21
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 226MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.6 mm on 9 Aug.
This area had burned before
33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 292 ha in 2018, 38 ha in 2021.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each county
-
Greenlee where it started942 ha reached on 30 Jul0.2 %
-
48 ha reached on 6 Aug0.0 %
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.
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 Jul | 25.6 °C | 23 % | 37 km/h | 1.4 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 31 Jul | 23.7 °C | 21 % | 50 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 33 |
| 1 Aug | 23.5 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 31 |
| 2 Aug | 25.9 °C | 22 % | 40 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 33 |
| 3 Aug | 27.2 °C | 19 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 4 Aug | 27.9 °C | 15 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 5 Aug | 29.8 °C | 15 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 6 Aug | 29.5 °C | 14 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 7 Aug | 25.6 °C | 31 % | 46 km/h | 3.9 mm | Low 9 |
| 8 Aug | 23.2 °C | 32 % | 56 km/h | 6.6 mm | Low 5 |
| 9 Aug after | 23.3 °C | 34 % | 44 km/h | 7.6 mm | Very low 3 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 8 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 37 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 188Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 11,079 haRattlesnake GreenleeApril 2018 · 29 days · 5 km away
- 5,067 haHorton GreenleeJune 2021 · 14 days · 10 km away
- 9,896 haBear Greenlee16 June 2021 · 14 days · 15 km away
- 1,734 haFoote GreenleeJune 2024 · 7 days · 18 km away
- 9,361 haBringham GreenleeJune 2020 · 22 days · 22 km away
- 13,571 haCow Canyon GreenleeAugust 2020 · 67 days · 28 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Black River Complex last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (6 August 2023). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 8 August 2023 (10 days from 30 July 2023), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
- How much area did it burn?
- The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 991 hectares (9.9 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
- Which counties burned?
- The fire entered 2 counties: Greenlee (942 ha, 0.2 %); Graham (48 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 29.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
- NIFC · National Interagency Fire Center ↗
- InciWeb · Incident Information System ↗
- MTBS · Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity ↗
Satellite cross-check
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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), official.
- The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 188 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.
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.