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Cariboo K fire, 7 July 2017 Cariboo K, Cariboo D

Out · last detection 10 Aug 2017, 10:36 UTC

The fire started on 7 July 2017 in Cariboo K, Canada, and satellites saw it burning for 35 days. Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 9,006 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 census subdivisions.

It is the 117th largest in British Columbia since 2016 (of 448 with a page). Number 52 in Canada in 2017, of 242.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cariboo F · 2017Cariboo K · 2017

Burnt area
9,006ha
official perimeter (CWFIS)
Duration
35days
7 Jul 2017 – 10 Aug 2017
Census subdivisions hit
2
municipalities
Started on
7 Jul
2017
Heat detections
1,071
in a single hotspot: 503 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
812MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Jul10 Aug
10 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

8 Jul 2017 · 1,350 MW · 129 9 Jul 2017 · 34 MW · 4 10 Jul 2017 · 300 MW · 116 11 Jul 2017 · 91 MW · 26 12 Jul 2017 · 62 MW · 6 13 Jul 2017 · 27 MW · 8 14 Jul 2017 · 302 MW · 30 15 Jul 2017 · 17,966 MW · 236 16 Jul 2017 · 297 MW · 95 17 Jul 2017 · 396 MW · 96 18 Jul 2017 · 872 MW · 103 19 Jul 2017 · 823 MW · 158 26 Jul 2017 · 1 MW · 1 27 Jul 2017 · 1 MW · 1 28 Jul 2017 · 1 MW · 1 29 Jul 2017 · 2 MW · 2 30 Jul 2017 · 10 MW · 2 31 Jul 2017 · 16 MW · 7 1 Aug 2017 · 85 MW · 17 2 Aug 2017 · 45 MW · 11 3 Aug 2017 · 5 MW · 4 4 Aug 2017 · 20 MW · 4 5 Aug 2017 · 7 MW · 4 6 Aug 2017 · 4 MW · 4 7 Aug 2017 · 4 MW · 2 8 Aug 2017 · 14 MW · 2 9 Aug 2017 · 1 MW · 1 10 Aug 2017 · 2 MW · 1
8 Jul 12 Jul 15 Jul 16 Jul 26 Jul 30 Jul 3 Aug 7 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

33°high
56km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 12 Aug.

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 5.7% of the area of London (90 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

  1. Cariboo K where it started
    6,198 ha reached on 8 Jul
    0.4 %
  2. Cariboo D
    2,845 ha reached on 15 Jul
    3.2 %

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 2015
Built-up area0.16 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.16 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
7 Jul 32.2 °C 12 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Jul 27.7 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Jul 25.9 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
10 Jul 19.3 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Jul 23.6 °C 24 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
12 Jul 25.1 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
13 Jul 23.7 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
14 Jul 26.4 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Jul 26.4 °C 16 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Jul 17.0 °C 37 % 50 km/h 2.5 mm Low 8
17 Jul 21.4 °C 24 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
18 Jul 25.2 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
19 Jul 26.6 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
20 Jul 16.1 °C 65 % 39 km/h 10.5 mm Very low 0
21 Jul 21.2 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
22 Jul 24.8 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
23 Jul 17.9 °C 44 % 38 km/h 3.6 mm Very low 3
24 Jul 23.6 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
25 Jul 27.7 °C 21 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
26 Jul 28.2 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.4 mm High 24
27 Jul 25.1 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.4 mm High 25
28 Jul 24.8 °C 32 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
29 Jul 28.6 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
30 Jul 25.8 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
31 Jul 25.6 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Aug 26.1 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
2 Aug 29.4 °C 17 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Aug 31.3 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Aug 27.2 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Aug 29.0 °C 19 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Aug 30.5 °C 16 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Aug 30.5 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
8 Aug 29.8 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Aug 31.9 °C 14 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Aug 32.8 °C 13 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Aug after 33.0 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Aug after 30.7 °C 25 % 46 km/h 1.2 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jun 2017
After · 17 Aug 2017

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 · 1,071Every 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 Canada ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cariboo K fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 July 2017 to 10 August 2017 (35 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 July 2017 to 4 August 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The official perimeter mapped by Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) is 9,006 hectares (90.1 km²). Other tallies, such as those of provincial agencies, may give slightly different figures.
Which census subdivisions burned?
The fire entered 2 census subdivisions: Cariboo K (6,198 ha, 0.4 %); Cariboo D (2,845 ha, 3.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.8 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
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

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: NBAC (Natural Resources Canada), official.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 July 2017 to 4 August 2017. 1,071 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 2015, 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.