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Border 2 Fire, January 2025 San Diego

Out · last detection 24 Jan 2025, 20:45 UTC

The fire started on 23 January 2025 in San Diego, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 2,683 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 180th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 116 in United States in 2025, of 327.

Burnt area
2,683ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
23 Jan 2025 – 23 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
23 Jan
2025
Heat detections
149
in a single hotspot: 331 MW
Danger at start
68
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
5.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jan23 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

24

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

The weather it burned in

23°high
89km/h · peak gust
2%lowest humidity

It had gone 59 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.0 mm on 26 Jan.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. San Diego where it started
    2,674 ha reached on 24 Jan
    0.2 %

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)
23 Jan 20.9 °C 3 % 89 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
24 Jan after 22.6 °C 2 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Jan after 15.8 °C 11 % 52 km/h 1.2 mm High 27
26 Jan after 10.9 °C 72 % 40 km/h 13.0 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Jan 2025
After · 30 Jan 2025

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 25 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 105 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 58: 3.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak105 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM10115 µg/m³
Optical depth0.42
2122232425262728
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 · 149Every 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 Border 2 fire last?
It burned between 23 January 2025 and 23 January 2025: 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 2,683 hectares (26.8 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered San Diego (2,674 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 22.6 °C, humidity dropped to 2 % and gusts hit 89 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, 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

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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.