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Bond Fire, December 2020 Orange

Out · last detection 3 Dec 2020, 21:53 UTC

The fire started on 3 December 2020 in Orange, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 2,677 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 181th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 153 in United States in 2020, of 441.

Burnt area
2,677ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
3 Dec 2020 – 3 Dec 2020
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
3 Dec
2020
Heat detections
176
in a single hotspot: 419 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Energy released
5.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Dec3 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

3

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

The weather it burned in

22°high
35km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Orange where it started
    2,689 ha reached on 3 Dec
    1.3 %

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)
3 Dec 22.0 °C 8 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Dec after 22.0 °C 8 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Dec after 21.0 °C 7 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Dec after 21.6 °C 10 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Dec after 22.4 °C 9 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Dec after 27.1 °C 3 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Dec after 20.8 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Dec after 17.2 °C 48 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
11 Dec after 14.3 °C 64 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
12 Dec after 16.1 °C 63 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
13 Dec after 18.9 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 22

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Nov 2020
After · 10 Dec 2020

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 · 176Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bond fire last?
It burned between 3 December 2020 and 3 December 2020: 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 2,677 hectares (26.8 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Orange (2,689 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 22.0 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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

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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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.

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.