Skip to content
worldfires
US · United States · –

Butler fire, October 2026 Butler

Out · last detection 31 Oct 2026, 18:02 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 23 October 2026 in Butler, United States. It was active for 9 days, with 76 heat detections and an area with fire of about 420 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across a single county.

The power measured by the satellite is low (6.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lawrence · 2022Bowlings Creek · 2016

NIFC has not yet published the perimeter of this fire. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). When the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.

Area with fire
≈ 420ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
9days
23 Oct 2026 – 31 Oct 2026
Counties hit
1
counties
Started on
23 Oct
2026
Heat detections
76
in a single hotspot: 7 MW
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
13MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Oct31 Oct
31 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

23 Oct 2026 · 19 MW · 11 24 Oct 2026 · 19 MW · 17 25 Oct 2026 · 19 MW · 10 26 Oct 2026 · 8 MW · 7 27 Oct 2026 · 10 MW · 5 28 Oct 2026 · 15 MW · 7 29 Oct 2026 · 15 MW · 10 30 Oct 2026 · 10 MW · 8 31 Oct 2026 · 1 MW · 1
23 Oct 25 Oct 27 Oct 29 Oct 31 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

26°high
37km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 2 Nov.

What happened to each county

  1. Butler where it started
    420 ha reached on 23 Oct
    0.3 %

Area with fire inside each county, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until NIFC publishes the official perimeter. 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.

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
23 Oct 21.0 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
24 Oct 21.6 °C 34 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
25 Oct 22.4 °C 32 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
26 Oct 23.9 °C 29 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
27 Oct 23.8 °C 33 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
28 Oct 24.6 °C 29 % 21 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 12
29 Oct 26.1 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
30 Oct 21.4 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
31 Oct 20.5 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
1 Nov after 21.5 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
2 Nov after 17.3 °C 77 % 33 km/h 2.7 mm Very low 4

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 9.8, a minimum humidity of 36% and 6 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 5.

FWI at the start 9.8
Minimum humidity 36 %
Days without rain 6
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Lawrence fire, November 2022
546 ha 2 days FWI 13.5 Min. humidity 30 % 173 km away, in 2022

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 54.7 mm on 11 Nov.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 5. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

2.7 mmfirst rain
2 Nov2 days after it ended
37km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 31 Oct, and on 2 Nov 2.7 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Oct 2026
After · 7 Nov 2026

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

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 24 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1030 µg/m³
Optical depth0.34
14 Oct17 Oct20 Oct23 Oct
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 76Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Butler fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 23 October 2026 to 31 October 2026 (9 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
How much area did it burn?
There is no official perimeter yet: NIFC has not published it. Heat detections rebuild about 420 hectares with fire (4.2 km²).
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Butler (420 ha, 0.3 %).
Is the Butler fire still active?
No fire detections since 31 Oct 2026, 18:02 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.1 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class Moderate.
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 · 13 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 24 October 2026 → 31 October 2026.
  2. Area: ≈ 434 → ≈ 420 ha.
  3. Start date: 22 October 2026 → 23 October 2026.
  4. Start date: 21 October 2026 → 22 October 2026.
  5. Area: ≈ 448 → ≈ 434 ha.
  6. Start date: 20 October 2026 → 21 October 2026.
  7. Area: ≈ 420 → ≈ 448 ha.
  8. Start date: 19 October 2026 → 20 October 2026.
  9. Area: ≈ 448 → ≈ 420 ha.
  10. Start date: 18 October 2026 → 19 October 2026.
  11. Start date: 17 October 2026 → 18 October 2026.
  12. Area: ≈ 434 → ≈ 448 ha.
  13. Start date: 16 October 2026 → 17 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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.

How we know this
  • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 420 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
  • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 76 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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.