Burned area
satellite only6,403ha
Perimeter published by MTBS (USGS/USFS).
- Source
- MTBS (USGS/USFS)
- Date
- 30 Jul 2022 – 3 Aug 2022
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
US · United States · –
Carter Canyon Fire, July 2022 Scotts Bluff
Out · last detection 3 Aug 2022, 08:00 UTC
The fire started on 30 July 2022 in Scotts Bluff, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 6,403 hectares, spread across a single county.
It is the 12th largest in Nebraska since 2016 (of 40 with a page). Number 83 in United States in 2022, of 493.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-11-05matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only5days
30 Jul 2022 to 3 Aug 2022: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- MTBS (USGS/USFS) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 3 Aug 2022, 08:00 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only30 Jul 2022
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- MTBS (USGS/USFS) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 30 Jul 2022
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only194
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 49 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP + NOAA-20)
- Date
- 30 Jul 2022 – 3 Aug 2022
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only1,692MW
Total radiative power on 31 July 2022; hotspots that day: 191.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 31 Jul 2022
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model19.7FWI · moderate
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 1.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 30 Jul 2022, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model34.9°C · 18% RH
High of 34.9 °C and minimum humidity of 18% on 1 August 2022; gusts of 53 km/h on 2 August 2022.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 30 Jul 2022 – 3 Aug 2022
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
logLast day with fire: 30 July 2022 → 3 August 2022.
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 5 November 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 6,403 ha
- Dates
- 30 Jul 2022 – 3 Aug 2022
- Name
- Carter Canyon
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/carter-canyon-fire-2022-07?v=2026-11-05A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire carter-canyon-fire-2022-07.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-07-30 | 0 | 0 | 33.1 | 14.9 | 21 | 19.8 | 33.8 | 0 | 19.7 | moderado | 1 |
| 2022-07-31 | 191 | 1,692 | 32.6 | 17.5 | 25 | 17.9 | 35.6 | 2.3 | 36.3 | alto | 1 |
| 2022-08-01 | 2 | 2 | 34.9 | 18 | 18 | 18.5 | 29.9 | 0 | 17.5 | moderado | 1 |
| 2022-08-02 | 0 | 0 | 34.6 | 21.6 | 19 | 30.9 | 52.9 | 1 | 54.2 | extremo | 1 |
| 2022-08-03 | 1 | 2 | 31.6 | 16.9 | 24 | 19.7 | 38.5 | 0 | 23.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2022-08-04 | 0 | 0 | 37.5 | 19.8 | 12 | 30.3 | 51.8 | 0 | 46.9 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2022-08-05 | 0 | 0 | 37.4 | 22.3 | 15 | 36.6 | 49.7 | 0.1 | 48.1 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2022-08-06 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 16.3 | 46 | 25.1 | 39.2 | 0.1 | 27.7 | alto | 0 |
| 2022-08-07 | 0 | 0 | 26.5 | 16.8 | 39 | 19.9 | 35.3 | 0 | 24.7 | alto | 0 |
| 2022-08-08 | 0 | 0 | 32.9 | 15.1 | 26 | 22.8 | 37.1 | 0 | 31.9 | alto | 0 |
| 2022-08-09 | 0 | 0 | 34.5 | 18.5 | 18 | 17.5 | 28.4 | 0 | 39 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2022-08-10 | 0 | 0 | 35.5 | 19.6 | 15 | 23.7 | 45.4 | 0 | 71.2 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2022-08-11 | 0 | 0 | 36.3 | 20 | 19 | 29.5 | 43.2 | 0 | 71.3 | muy_extremo | 0 |
| 2022-08-12 | 0 | 0 | 34.8 | 20.4 | 22 | 26.3 | 45 | 0.1 | 51.5 | extremo | 0 |
| 2022-08-13 | 0 | 0 | 34.6 | 18.7 | 20 | 20.5 | 38.9 | 0.4 | 43.7 | muy_alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: MTBS (USGS/USFS), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 6,403ha
- official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
- Duration
- ≈ 5days
- 30 Jul 2022 – 3 Aug 2022
- Counties hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 30 Jul
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 194
- in a single hotspot: 49 MW
- Danger at start
- 20
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 565MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
30 Jul3 Aug
3 Aug 2022
How it evolved, day by day
31 Jul
1 Aug
3 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
35°high
53km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 23 ha in 2021.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each county
-
Scotts Bluff where it started6,400 ha reached on 31 Jul3.3 %
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 2020Built-up area0.76 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there were about 0.76 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Jul | 33.1 °C | 21 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 31 Jul | 32.6 °C | 25 % | 36 km/h | 2.3 mm | High 36 |
| 1 Aug | 34.9 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 2 Aug | 34.6 °C | 19 % | 53 km/h | 1.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 3 Aug | 31.6 °C | 24 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 4 Aug after | 37.5 °C | 12 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 5 Aug after | 37.4 °C | 15 % | 50 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 48 |
| 6 Aug after | 27.0 °C | 46 % | 39 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 28 |
| 7 Aug after | 26.5 °C | 39 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 8 Aug after | 32.9 °C | 26 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 9 Aug after | 34.5 °C | 18 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 10 Aug after | 35.5 °C | 15 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 11 Aug after | 36.3 °C | 19 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 12 Aug after | 34.8 °C | 22 % | 45 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 13 Aug after | 34.6 °C | 20 % | 39 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 44 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 23 Jul 2022
After · 10 Aug 2022
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · 194Every 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
- 913 haCross Ca Scotts BluffAugust 2021 · 1 day · 7 km away
- 1,081 haVista Trend Ca Scotts BluffSeptember 2021 · 1 day · 9 km away
- 1,101 haBuffalo Creek BannerNovember 2021 · 2 days · 21 km away
- 1,603 haSmokey BannerSeptember 2022 · 2 days · 26 km away
- 1,391 haHubbards Gap BannerAugust 2020 · 4 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Carter Canyon Fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (30 July 2022). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 3 August 2022 (5 days from 30 July 2022), 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 6,403 hectares (64.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
- Which counties burned?
- The fire only entered Scotts Bluff (6,400 ha, 3.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 53 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 · Emergency number and official warnings
- NIFC · National Interagency Fire Center ↗
- InciWeb · Incident Information System ↗
- MTBS · Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity ↗
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 30 July 2022 → 3 August 2022.
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
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. 194 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.
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.