How long did the Blue 2 Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (16 May 2024). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 23 May 2024 (8 days from 16 May 2024), 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 3,107 hectares (31.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Lincoln (3,095 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 25.4 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 72 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, class Extreme.

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 · 2024-05-16 → 2024-05-23

Blue 2 Fire, May 2024 Lincoln

Out · last detection 23 May 2024, 20:57 UTC

The fire started on 16 May 2024 in Lincoln, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 3,107 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 49th largest in New Mexico since 2016 (of 204 with a page). Number 113 in United States in 2024, of 371.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Three Rivers · 2021 Mcbride · 2022 Salt · 2024 Lincoln · 2018

Burnt area: 3,107ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 8days; 16 May 2024 – 23 May 2024
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 16 May; 2024
Heat detections: 30; in a single hotspot: 106 MW
Danger at start: 5; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 317MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 May23 May

Play back 23 May 2024

How it evolved, day by day

19 May 20 May 22 May 23 May

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

The weather it burned in

25°high

72km/h · peak gust

5%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7 ha in 2021.

7 ha Three Rivers fire, April 2021 2,578 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (31 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

Lincoln where it started

3,095 ha reached on 19 May

0.2 %

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 2025

Built-up area0.13 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.13 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
16 May	14.7 °C	28 %	46 km/h	4.7 mm	Very low 5
17 May	21.9 °C	17 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
18 May	25.4 °C	11 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 May	25.3 °C	7 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
20 May	25.3 °C	8 %	72 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
21 May	21.9 °C	12 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
22 May	23.7 °C	6 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
23 May	22.7 °C	5 %	66 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
24 May after	23.0 °C	5 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
25 May after	23.6 °C	6 %	82 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
26 May after	22.8 °C	10 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
27 May after	25.8 °C	6 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
28 May after	27.0 °C	6 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
29 May after	26.3 °C	5 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
30 May after	26.0 °C	6 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
31 May after	26.8 °C	8 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
1 Jun after	26.8 °C	10 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
2 Jun after	27.0 °C	4 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 May 2024

After · 30 May 2024

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 15 May 2024 the air beside the fire reached 11 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak11 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1018 µg/m³

Optical depth0.24

141516171819

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 30Every 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

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Blue 2 Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (16 May 2024). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 23 May 2024 (8 days from 16 May 2024), 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 3,107 hectares (31.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Lincoln (3,095 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 25.4 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 72 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, class Extreme.
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

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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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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. 30 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 2025, 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