How long did the Britania Mountain Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (26 August 2018). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 10 September 2018 (16 days from 26 August 2018), 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 9,583 hectares (95.8 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire entered 2 counties: Albany (6,644 ha, 0.6 %); Platte (2,986 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.6 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 74 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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 · 2018-08-26 → 2018-09-10

Britania Mountain Fire, August 2018 Albany, Platte

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2018, 19:56 UTC

The fire started on 26 August 2018 in Albany, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 9,583 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the 14th largest in Wyoming since 2016 (of 117 with a page). Number 68 in United States in 2018, of 511.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Moonshine · 2026

Burnt area: 9,583ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 16days; 26 Aug 2018 – 10 Sept 2018
Counties hit: 2; counties
Started on: 26 Aug; 2018
Heat detections: 798; in a single hotspot: 394 MW
Danger at start: 60; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.7GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Aug10 Sept

Play back 10 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

26 Aug 28 Aug 30 Aug 1 Sept 3 Sept 10 Sept

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

74km/h · peak gust

4%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 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.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.1% of the area of London (96 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

Albany where it started

6,644 ha reached on 26 Aug

0.6 %
Platte

2,986 ha reached on 27 Aug

0.6 %

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 2020

Built-up area0.91 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.91 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
26 Aug	28.6 °C	10 %	65 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
27 Aug	25.7 °C	18 %	74 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
28 Aug	20.7 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
29 Aug	28.5 °C	4 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
30 Aug	29.5 °C	8 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
31 Aug	28.3 °C	14 %	45 km/h	0.7 mm	Very high 42
1 Sept	27.3 °C	10 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
2 Sept	24.1 °C	30 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
3 Sept	27.7 °C	17 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
4 Sept	22.0 °C	40 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
5 Sept	21.0 °C	43 %	48 km/h	0.3 mm	High 30
6 Sept	22.9 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
7 Sept	24.9 °C	27 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
8 Sept	27.8 °C	17 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
9 Sept	28.2 °C	10 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
10 Sept	29.6 °C	6 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
11 Sept after	28.4 °C	15 %	41 km/h	0.7 mm	Very high 43
12 Sept after	32.0 °C	7 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
13 Sept after	30.4 °C	5 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
14 Sept after	29.3 °C	11 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
15 Sept after	31.3 °C	11 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
16 Sept after	30.7 °C	12 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
17 Sept after	28.6 °C	14 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
18 Sept after	29.1 °C	17 %	35 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 49
19 Sept after	18.6 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 39
20 Sept after	21.7 °C	10 %	74 km/h	0.6 mm	Extreme 68

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Aug 2018

After · 17 Sept 2018

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 · 798Every 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

2,964 haMoonshine AlbanySeptember 2026 · 7 days · 14 km away

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Britania Mountain Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (26 August 2018). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 10 September 2018 (16 days from 26 August 2018), 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 9,583 hectares (95.8 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire entered 2 counties: Albany (6,644 ha, 0.6 %); Platte (2,986 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.6 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 74 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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What really happened?

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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. 798 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.

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