How long did the Bonita Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (3 June 2017). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 23 June 2017 (21 days from 3 June 2017), 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 3,138 hectares (31.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Rio Arriba (3,152 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.5 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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 · 2017-06-03 → 2017-06-23

Bonita Fire, June 2017 Rio Arriba

Out · last detection 23 Jun 2017, 20:19 UTC

The fire started on 3 June 2017 in Rio Arriba, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 3,138 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 48th largest in New Mexico since 2016 (of 204 with a page). Number 198 in United States in 2017, of 619.

Compare with…

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Burnt area: 3,138ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 21days; 3 Jun 2017 – 23 Jun 2017
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 3 Jun; 2017
Heat detections: 507; in a single hotspot: 246 MW
Danger at start: 4; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 380MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Jun23 Jun

Play back 23 Jun 2017

How it evolved, day by day

6 Jun 10 Jun 13 Jun 15 Jun 16 Jun 19 Jun 22 Jun

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

63km/h · peak gust

6%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 26 Jun.

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 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

Rio Arriba where it started

3,152 ha reached on 6 Jun

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 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
3 Jun	20.6 °C	24 %	28 km/h	0.2 mm	Very low 4
4 Jun	23.4 °C	21 %	29 km/h	0.6 mm	Low 10
5 Jun	23.5 °C	17 %	29 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 17
6 Jun	22.8 °C	20 %	32 km/h	1.7 mm	Low 7
7 Jun	23.5 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 17
8 Jun	24.3 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
9 Jun	25.1 °C	8 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
10 Jun	25.8 °C	11 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
11 Jun	24.1 °C	9 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
12 Jun	25.1 °C	10 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
13 Jun	19.7 °C	8 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
14 Jun	24.8 °C	6 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
15 Jun	26.9 °C	6 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
16 Jun	28.2 °C	6 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
17 Jun	29.6 °C	8 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
18 Jun	30.3 °C	11 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
19 Jun	29.9 °C	13 %	41 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 41
20 Jun	30.5 °C	7 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
21 Jun	29.8 °C	10 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
22 Jun	28.3 °C	12 %	59 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 55
23 Jun	28.9 °C	7 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
24 Jun after	27.3 °C	12 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
25 Jun after	27.2 °C	18 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 42
26 Jun after	26.9 °C	16 %	34 km/h	1.9 mm	Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 May 2017

After · 30 Jun 2017

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 · 507Every 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 Bonita Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (3 June 2017). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 23 June 2017 (21 days from 3 June 2017), 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 3,138 hectares (31.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Rio Arriba (3,152 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.5 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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.

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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. 507 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 2015, 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