Skip to content
worldfires
US · United States · →

Buffalo Fire, July 2020 Powder River

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2020, 20:09 UTC

The fire started on 22 July 2020 in Powder River, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 4,467 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 60th largest in Montana since 2016 (of 302 with a page). Number 122 in United States in 2020, of 441.

Burnt area
4,467ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
22 Jul 2020 – 22 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
22 Jul
2020
Heat detections
83
in a single hotspot: 143 MW
Danger at start
53
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
2.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

23 Jul 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Jul22 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

2223

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
51km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 28 Jul.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 112 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Powder River where it started
    4,449 ha reached on 22 Jul
    0.5 %

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)
22 Jul 37.2 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Jul after 32.5 °C 22 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Jul after 32.7 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
25 Jul after 30.7 °C 21 % 47 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 49
26 Jul after 30.8 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Jul after 33.0 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Jul after 33.9 °C 20 % 31 km/h 1.1 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Jul 2020
After · 29 Jul 2020

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 · 83Every 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 Buffalo fire last?
It burned between 22 July 2020 and 22 July 2020: 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 4,467 hectares (44.7 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Powder River (4,449 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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.