How long did the Cariboo C fire last?

It burned between 11 July 2021 and 14 August 2021: 35 days, according to the dates recorded by Canada’s CWFIS and the heat detections seen by satellite.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter mapped by Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) is 1,704 hectares (17.0 km²). Other tallies, such as those of provincial agencies, may give slightly different figures.

Which census subdivisions burned?

The fire only entered Cariboo C (1,702 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.

Where does this data come from?

From the official burnt perimeter of Canada’s CWFIS (NBAC, Natural Resources Canada) or, for the current season and until NBAC publishes it, the one rebuilt by GWIS (Copernicus); from NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots; and from the administrative boundaries of Canada. It is not an official report.

CA · Canada · 2021-07-11 → 2021-08-14

Cariboo C fire, July 2021 Cariboo C

Out · last detection 14 Aug 2021, 11:07 UTC

The fire started on 11 July 2021 in Cariboo C, Canada, and satellites saw it burning for 35 days. Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,704 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single census subdivision.

It is the 326th largest in British Columbia since 2016 (of 448 with a page). Number 245 in Canada in 2021, of 304.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cariboo C · 2024 Cariboo F · 2017 Cariboo F · 2017

Burnt area: 1,704ha; official perimeter (CWFIS)
Duration: 35days; 11 Jul 2021 – 14 Aug 2021
Census subdivisions hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 11 Jul; 2021
Heat detections: 162; in a single hotspot: 289 MW
Danger at start: 3; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 177MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Jul14 Aug

Play back 14 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

12 Jul 15 Jul 29 Jul 31 Jul 2 Aug 5 Aug 13 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

29°high

62km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 19.9 mm on 15 Aug.

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 1.1% of the area of London (17 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 census subdivision

Cariboo C where it started

1,702 ha reached on 12 Jul

0.2 %

Burnt area inside each census subdivision, 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)
11 Jul	20.7 °C	39 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 3
12 Jul	24.7 °C	31 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
13 Jul	27.9 °C	23 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
14 Jul	24.0 °C	31 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
15 Jul	20.7 °C	38 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
16 Jul	17.4 °C	71 %	27 km/h	12.0 mm	Very low 0
17 Jul	19.4 °C	58 %	36 km/h	8.4 mm	Very low 0
18 Jul	18.6 °C	55 %	35 km/h	3.8 mm	Very low 0
19 Jul	23.8 °C	27 %	25 km/h	0.1 mm	Very low 2
20 Jul	19.6 °C	39 %	34 km/h	0.3 mm	Very low 5
21 Jul	14.7 °C	54 %	35 km/h	8.8 mm	Very low 0
22 Jul	13.8 °C	43 %	62 km/h	0.5 mm	Very low 1
23 Jul	15.6 °C	50 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 2
24 Jul	17.6 °C	52 %	37 km/h	1.3 mm	Very low 1
25 Jul	15.3 °C	59 %	30 km/h	3.6 mm	Very low 0
26 Jul	19.4 °C	47 %	44 km/h	0.9 mm	Very low 1
27 Jul	20.2 °C	35 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 4
28 Jul	24.5 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.2 mm	Low 9
29 Jul	24.2 °C	36 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
30 Jul	28.6 °C	23 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
31 Jul	29.1 °C	25 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
1 Aug	21.7 °C	55 %	23 km/h	1.0 mm	Low 5
2 Aug	23.2 °C	55 %	31 km/h	4.1 mm	Very low 1
3 Aug	25.8 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
4 Aug	27.8 °C	21 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
5 Aug	25.5 °C	34 %	40 km/h	2.3 mm	Very low 5
6 Aug	15.3 °C	44 %	48 km/h	2.9 mm	Very low 2
7 Aug	14.6 °C	59 %	47 km/h	1.6 mm	Very low 2
8 Aug	19.3 °C	51 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 3
9 Aug	18.1 °C	49 %	40 km/h	1.5 mm	Very low 3
10 Aug	19.2 °C	58 %	45 km/h	1.4 mm	Very low 3
11 Aug	20.6 °C	31 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
12 Aug	24.3 °C	39 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
13 Aug	29.0 °C	23 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
14 Aug	22.7 °C	40 %	50 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 18
15 Aug after	17.3 °C	73 %	66 km/h	19.9 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Jul 2021

After · 21 Aug 2021

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 · 162Every 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

All fires in Canada ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cariboo C fire last?: It burned between 11 July 2021 and 14 August 2021: 35 days, according to the dates recorded by Canada’s CWFIS and the heat detections seen by satellite.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter mapped by Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) is 1,704 hectares (17.0 km²). Other tallies, such as those of provincial agencies, may give slightly different figures.
Which census subdivisions burned?: The fire only entered Cariboo C (1,702 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?: From the official burnt perimeter of Canada’s CWFIS (NBAC, Natural Resources Canada) or, for the current season and until NBAC publishes it, the one rebuilt by GWIS (Copernicus); from NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots; and from the administrative boundaries of Canada. 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 ↗
CWFIS · Interactive map ↗

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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What really happened?

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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: NBAC (Natural Resources Canada), official.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 162 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: it comes from the National Burned Area Composite (NBAC) of the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS), Natural Resources Canada, which maps it on satellite imagery and publishes it under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Until NBAC publishes the current season, this year’s fires carry the perimeter rebuilt from heat detections by GWIS (Copernicus, CC BY 4.0), which is approximate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Census subdivision boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per census subdivision is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from official figures.

Where it burned