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Boylston Fire, July 2018 Kittitas

Out · last detection 20 Jul 2018, 21:13 UTC

The fire started on 19 July 2018 in Kittitas, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 26,841 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 13th largest in Washington since 2016 (of 285 with a page). Number 22 in United States in 2018, of 511.

Burnt area
26,841ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
19 Jul 2018 – 19 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
19 Jul
2018
Heat detections
297
in a single hotspot: 190 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
5.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jul19 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

20

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
70km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 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: 68 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Kittitas where it started
    26,663 ha reached on 20 Jul
    4.4 %

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)
12 Jul 34.4 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Jul 36.4 °C 11 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
14 Jul 32.0 °C 13 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
15 Jul 34.8 °C 10 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
16 Jul 37.3 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
17 Jul 37.4 °C 10 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 84
18 Jul 32.0 °C 22 % 70 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
19 Jul 30.3 °C 12 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
20 Jul after 28.0 °C 11 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
21 Jul after 28.2 °C 15 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
22 Jul after 30.1 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Jul after 34.3 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
24 Jul after 36.0 °C 8 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
25 Jul after 35.6 °C 11 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
26 Jul after 35.7 °C 11 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
27 Jul after 34.7 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
28 Jul after 34.5 °C 14 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
29 Jul after 36.0 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
30 Jul after 37.4 °C 9 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
31 Jul after 38.7 °C 11 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
1 Aug after 33.7 °C 13 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Jul 2018
After · 26 Jul 2018

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 · 297Every 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 Boylston fire last?
It burned between 19 July 2018 and 19 July 2018: 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 26,841 hectares (268.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Kittitas (26,663 ha, 4.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 70 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 84, class Very 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.

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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.