Burned area
satellite only5,613ha
Perimeter published by MTBS (USGS/USFS).
- Source
- MTBS (USGS/USFS)
- Date
- 26 Oct 2020 – 27 Oct 2020
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
US · United States · –
Blue Ridge Fire, October 2020 San Bernardino, Orange, Riverside
Out · last detection 27 Oct 2020, 21:47 UTC
The fire started on 26 October 2020 in San Bernardino, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 5,613 hectares, spread across 3 counties.
It is the 122th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 100 in United States in 2020, of 441.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only2days
26 Oct 2020 to 27 Oct 2020: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- MTBS (USGS/USFS) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 27 Oct 2020, 21:47 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only26 Oct 2020
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- MTBS (USGS/USFS) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 26 Oct 2020
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only236
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 284 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 26 Oct 2020 – 27 Oct 2020
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only2,928MW
Total radiative power on 27 October 2020; hotspots that day: 201.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 27 Oct 2020
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model64.3FWI · extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 26 Oct 2020, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model25.2°C · 4% RH
High of 25.2 °C and minimum humidity of 4% on 27 October 2020; gusts of 66 km/h on 26 October 2020.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 26 Oct 2020 – 27 Oct 2020
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
Living inside
model≈ 600people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 11 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2020).
- Source
- GHSL R2023A · JRC
- Date
- calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
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.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 5,613 ha
- Dates
- 26 Oct 2020 – 27 Oct 2020
- Name
- Blue Ridge
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/blue-ridge-fire-2020-10?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire blue-ridge-fire-2020-10.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-10-26 | 35 | 1,361 | 20 | 12.9 | 3 | 21.4 | 65.5 | 0 | 64.3 | extremo | 1 |
| 2020-10-27 | 201 | 2,928 | 25.2 | 9.6 | 4 | 8.7 | 27.4 | 0 | 52.5 | extremo | 1 |
| 2020-10-28 | 0 | 0 | 26.3 | 10.6 | 12 | 10 | 31.7 | 0 | 51.3 | extremo | 0 |
| 2020-10-29 | 0 | 0 | 29.6 | 11.2 | 9 | 8.5 | 25.9 | 0 | 47.2 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2020-10-30 | 0 | 0 | 29.1 | 12.2 | 11 | 9.8 | 29.5 | 0 | 49.8 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2020-10-31 | 0 | 0 | 30.4 | 12.1 | 9 | 7.1 | 24.5 | 0 | 47.5 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2020-11-01 | 0 | 0 | 30.6 | 15.2 | 12 | 7.7 | 23.4 | 0 | 50 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2020-11-02 | 0 | 0 | 28 | 14.5 | 24 | 7.9 | 25.6 | 0 | 46.8 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2020-11-03 | 0 | 0 | 26.6 | 14.3 | 34 | 9.6 | 25.2 | 0 | 36.6 | alto | 0 |
| 2020-11-04 | 0 | 0 | 31.4 | 14.2 | 14 | 6.5 | 19.8 | 0 | 37.8 | alto | 0 |
| 2020-11-05 | 0 | 0 | 32.9 | 16.6 | 9 | 9.7 | 26.6 | 0 | 50.1 | extremo | 0 |
| 2020-11-06 | 0 | 0 | 25.6 | 14.4 | 25 | 13.2 | 38.9 | 1.2 | 46.1 | muy_alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: MTBS (USGS/USFS), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 5,613ha
- official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
- Duration
- ≈ 2days
- 26 Oct 2020 – 27 Oct 2020
- Counties hit
- 3
- counties
- Started on
- 26 Oct
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 236
- in a single hotspot: 284 MW
- Danger at start
- 64
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.1GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
26 Oct27 Oct
27 Oct 2020
How it evolved, day by day
26 Oct
27 Oct
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
66km/h · peak gust
3%lowest humidity
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 6 Nov.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
San Bernardino where it started4,146 ha reached on 26 Oct0.1 %
-
1,161 ha reached on 26 Oct0.6 %
-
270 ha reached on 26 Oct0.0 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Built-up area11 ha
Residents≈ 600
Inside the perimeter there were about 11 hectares of built-up land and about 600 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.
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)
Started with Extreme FWI: 36 % of the area in United States Strong wind: 27 % of the area in United States Very dry air: 40 % of the area in United States 60 days without rain: 7.0 % of the area in United States
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Oct | 20.0 °C | 3 % | 66 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 27 Oct | 25.2 °C | 4 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 28 Oct after | 26.3 °C | 12 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 29 Oct after | 29.6 °C | 9 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 30 Oct after | 29.1 °C | 11 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 31 Oct after | 30.4 °C | 9 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 1 Nov after | 30.6 °C | 12 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 2 Nov after | 28.0 °C | 24 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 3 Nov after | 26.6 °C | 34 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 4 Nov after | 31.4 °C | 14 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 5 Nov after | 32.9 °C | 9 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 6 Nov after | 25.6 °C | 25 % | 39 km/h | 1.2 mm | Very high 46 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 64.3, a minimum humidity of 3% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 20.
FWI at the start
64.3
Minimum humidity
3 %
Days without rain
60+
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Blue Ridge Fire, October 2020
5,613 ha
2 days
FWI 64.3
Min. humidity 3 %
Maria Fire, October 2019
4,061 ha
8 days
FWI 61.7
Min. humidity 6 %
131 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Tijuana fire, September 2020
1,689 ha
3 days
FWI 65.2
Min. humidity 7 %
188 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Lake Fire, August 2020
12,528 ha
19 days
FWI 60.0
Min. humidity 7 %
115 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Lilac 5 Fire, December 2017
1,681 ha
2 days
FWI 71.8
Min. humidity 5 %
83 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Junction Ranch Fire, July 2020
3,774 ha
6 days
FWI 59.5
Min. humidity 5 %
235 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
What happened to them
- 4 days
- median duration
- 2,916 ha
- median area
- 80 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 4.8 mm
- rain at the end (median; 5 of 20 had it)
It was 1.9 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 2 days, against 4 days.
Only 5 of its 20 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 15 of 20, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 4.8 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
1.2 mmfirst rain
6 Nov10 days after it ended
66km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 27 Oct, and on 6 Nov 1.2 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 5 of 20, with a median of 4.8 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 19 Oct 2020
After · 3 Nov 2020
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · 236Every 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
- 1,108 haCanyon RiversideSeptember 2017 · 2 days · 8 km away
- 3,682 haCanyon 2 OrangeOctober 2017 · 2 days · 10 km away
- 2,677 haBond OrangeDecember 2020 · 1 day · 20 km away
- 5,060 haSilverado OrangeOctober 2020 · 3 days · 21 km away
- 9,238 haHoly RiversideAugust 2018 · 8 days · 33 km away
- 1,831 haFish Los AngelesJune 2016 · 4 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Blue Ridge Fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (26 October 2020). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 27 October 2020 (2 days from 26 October 2020), 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 5,613 hectares (56.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
- Which counties burned?
- The fire entered 3 counties: San Bernardino (4,146 ha, 0.1 %); Orange (1,161 ha, 0.6 %); Riverside (270 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 25.2 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 20. Their median duration was 4 days and their median area 2,916 ha; 80 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 5 of its 20 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 15 of 20, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 4.8 mm.
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.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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. 236 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.