How long did the Bull Draw Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (29 July 2018). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 31 August 2018 (34 days from 29 July 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 15,069 hectares (150.7 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire entered 2 counties: Montrose (7,632 ha, 1.3 %); Mesa (7,387 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.1 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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 · 2018-07-29 → 2018-08-31

Bull Draw Fire, July 2018 Montrose, Mesa

Out · last detection 31 Aug 2018, 10:01 UTC

The fire started on 29 July 2018 in Mesa, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 34 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 15,069 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the 11th largest in Colorado since 2016 (of 167 with a page). Number 48 in United States in 2018, of 511.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kelso · 2016 Turner Gulch · 2025 Bucktail · 2024 Sowbelly · 2025

Burnt area: 15,069ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 34days; 29 Jul 2018 – 31 Aug 2018
Counties hit: 2; counties
Started on: 29 Jul; 2018
Heat detections: 1,370; in a single hotspot: 916 MW
Danger at start: 46; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 951MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jul31 Aug

Play back 31 Aug 2018

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jul 4 Aug 8 Aug 12 Aug 17 Aug 27 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

32°high

64km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 1 Sept.

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 9.5% of the area of London (151 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

Montrose

7,632 ha reached on 30 Jul

1.3 %
Mesa where it started

7,387 ha reached on 4 Aug

0.8 %

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 area0.12 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.12 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)
29 Jul	30.8 °C	10 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
30 Jul	30.6 °C	8 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
31 Jul	32.0 °C	8 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
1 Aug	29.0 °C	14 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
2 Aug	30.4 °C	18 %	35 km/h	1.3 mm	High 29
3 Aug	26.6 °C	29 %	28 km/h	2.9 mm	Moderate 11
4 Aug	30.3 °C	15 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
5 Aug	31.0 °C	12 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
6 Aug	31.3 °C	7 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
7 Aug	31.4 °C	7 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
8 Aug	31.3 °C	7 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
9 Aug	31.9 °C	7 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
10 Aug	31.3 °C	13 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 43
11 Aug	30.4 °C	14 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
12 Aug	32.1 °C	12 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
13 Aug	31.6 °C	9 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
14 Aug	31.4 °C	13 %	36 km/h	0.8 mm	Very high 39
15 Aug	28.4 °C	16 %	39 km/h	1.0 mm	High 33
16 Aug	28.2 °C	24 %	32 km/h	1.1 mm	High 26
17 Aug	28.2 °C	22 %	33 km/h	1.1 mm	High 26
18 Aug	27.5 °C	14 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
19 Aug	27.2 °C	15 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
20 Aug	29.9 °C	11 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
21 Aug	20.4 °C	24 %	55 km/h	6.2 mm	Low 7
22 Aug	21.2 °C	42 %	44 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 13
23 Aug	25.0 °C	24 %	41 km/h	2.3 mm	Moderate 12
24 Aug	26.0 °C	22 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
25 Aug	27.4 °C	23 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	High 30
26 Aug	24.1 °C	32 %	50 km/h	2.8 mm	Low 10
27 Aug	26.7 °C	15 %	64 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
28 Aug	26.9 °C	9 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
29 Aug	27.8 °C	10 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
30 Aug	28.5 °C	10 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
31 Aug	26.6 °C	14 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
1 Sept after	23.8 °C	20 %	37 km/h	1.1 mm	High 24

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Jul 2018

After · 7 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 · 1,370Every 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

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Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bull Draw Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (29 July 2018). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 31 August 2018 (34 days from 29 July 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 15,069 hectares (150.7 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire entered 2 counties: Montrose (7,632 ha, 1.3 %); Mesa (7,387 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.1 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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.

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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.
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. 1,370 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