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Buffalo Fire, July 2019 Humboldt

Out · last measured on 23 Jul 2019

The fire started on 6 July 2019 in Humboldt, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 2,628 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 95th largest in Nevada since 2016 (of 237 with a page). Number 106 in United States in 2019, of 367.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Summit · 2019Gregg · 2018Grass Valley · 2017Iron Point · 2017

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
2,628ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
18days
6 Jul 2019 – 23 Jul 2019
Counties hit
1
counties
Started on
6 Jul
2019
Danger at start
53
Extreme · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

36°high
45km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (26 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

  1. Humboldt where it started
    2,606 ha
    0.1 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
6 Jul 32.6 °C 10 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
7 Jul 27.3 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Jul 27.7 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Jul 31.6 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Jul 33.1 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Jul 34.9 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Jul 35.9 °C 8 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
13 Jul 33.9 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
14 Jul 33.6 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
15 Jul 31.1 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
16 Jul 29.2 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Jul 32.7 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Jul 33.8 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
19 Jul 31.8 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
20 Jul 33.8 °C 14 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Jul 36.1 °C 9 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
22 Jul 36.0 °C 8 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
23 Jul 32.2 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
24 Jul after 33.6 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
25 Jul after 33.8 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
26 Jul after 24.6 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.8 mm High 26
27 Jul after 32.7 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Jul after 36.3 °C 9 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Jul after 33.8 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
30 Jul after 33.7 °C 2 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
31 Jul after 33.4 °C 6 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
1 Aug after 33.2 °C 5 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
2 Aug after 34.0 °C 8 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Jun 2019
After · 30 Jul 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 Fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 July 2019 to 23 July 2019 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 July 2019 to 6 July 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 2,628 hectares (26.3 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Humboldt (2,606 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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

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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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.

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 6 July 2019 to 6 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.