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Buffalo Corral Fire, July 2019 Cochise

Out · last measured on 13 Aug 2019

The fire started on 14 July 2019 in Cochise, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 463 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 360th largest in Arizona since 2016 (of 380 with a page). Number 344 in United States in 2019, of 367.

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We have the official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC) for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by county is there.

Burnt area
463ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
31days
14 Jul 2019 – 13 Aug 2019
Counties hit
1
counties
Started on
14 Jul
2019
Danger at start
50
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

36°high
53km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.4 mm on 23 Aug.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each county

  1. Cochise where it started
    465 ha
    0.0 %

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 area0.30 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.30 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)
14 Jul 36.4 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 50
15 Jul 35.9 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 44
16 Jul 36.5 °C 23 % 53 km/h 1.7 mm High 36
17 Jul 32.5 °C 32 % 34 km/h 4.0 mm Moderate 12
18 Jul 31.5 °C 36 % 39 km/h 2.9 mm Moderate 12
19 Jul 31.9 °C 30 % 36 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 21
20 Jul 33.6 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
21 Jul 33.6 °C 34 % 38 km/h 7.0 mm Low 9
22 Jul 32.7 °C 30 % 36 km/h 3.0 mm Moderate 13
23 Jul 33.0 °C 29 % 49 km/h 4.9 mm Low 8
24 Jul 31.7 °C 35 % 30 km/h 1.8 mm Low 8
25 Jul 32.9 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
26 Jul 33.6 °C 30 % 34 km/h 1.7 mm Moderate 17
27 Jul 34.5 °C 29 % 39 km/h 3.7 mm Low 10
28 Jul 32.5 °C 29 % 40 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 20
29 Jul 32.2 °C 33 % 41 km/h 6.1 mm Very low 3
30 Jul 30.2 °C 43 % 37 km/h 13.6 mm Very low 1
31 Jul 28.6 °C 48 % 32 km/h 6.9 mm Very low 0
1 Aug 32.3 °C 36 % 22 km/h 0.5 mm Low 7
2 Aug 32.9 °C 34 % 32 km/h 6.7 mm Very low 2
3 Aug 33.0 °C 31 % 43 km/h 3.1 mm Very low 5
4 Aug 33.1 °C 32 % 28 km/h 2.4 mm Very low 5
5 Aug 33.5 °C 33 % 31 km/h 1.9 mm Low 9
6 Aug 31.7 °C 41 % 31 km/h 2.0 mm Very low 5
7 Aug 30.6 °C 43 % 34 km/h 1.0 mm Low 8
8 Aug 30.8 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
9 Aug 29.9 °C 37 % 30 km/h 3.2 mm Very low 4
10 Aug 25.4 °C 60 % 29 km/h 17.8 mm Very low 0
11 Aug 28.5 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.4 mm Very low 2
12 Aug 30.6 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm Low 8
13 Aug 32.2 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
14 Aug after 33.5 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
15 Aug after 34.0 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 19
16 Aug after 32.5 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
17 Aug after 32.1 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
18 Aug after 30.7 °C 25 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
19 Aug after 33.7 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Aug after 35.9 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
21 Aug after 35.5 °C 19 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Aug after 33.0 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.7 mm High 26
23 Aug after 27.8 °C 46 % 31 km/h 6.4 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Jul 2019
After · 20 Aug 2019

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Buffalo Corral Fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 July 2019 to 13 August 2019 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 July 2019 to 14 July 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 463 hectares (4.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Cochise (465 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

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

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), official.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 July 2019 to 14 July 2019. No 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.