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Chimney Fire, July 2026 Elko

Out · last detection 27 Jul 2026, 21:04 UTC

The fire started on 26 July 2026 in Elko, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 8,492 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 32th largest in Nevada since 2016 (of 237 with a page). Number 66 in United States in 2026, of 423.

Burnt area
8,492ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
26 Jul 2026 – 26 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
26 Jul
2026
Heat detections
192
in a single hotspot: 371 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
9.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

27 Jul 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Jul26 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

2627

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
28km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,323 ha in 2017, 468 ha in 2018, 248 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,796 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Elko where it started
    8,536 ha reached on 26 Jul
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each county, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
26 Jul 29.8 °C 8 % 28 km/h 1.0 mm Very high 40
27 Jul after 29.6 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Jul after 31.4 °C 6 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
29 Jul after 31.0 °C 10 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
30 Jul after 31.8 °C 10 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 Jul after 33.3 °C 9 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Aug after 33.2 °C 7 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
2 Aug after 30.0 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
3 Aug after 25.8 °C 10 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
4 Aug after 29.0 °C 7 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Aug after 31.8 °C 7 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Jul 2026
After · 2 Aug 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 29 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 87 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 54: 3.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak87 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1092 µg/m³
Optical depth0.90
2425262728293031
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 · 192Every 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 United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chimney fire last?
It burned between 26 July 2026 and 26 July 2026: 1 day, according to the start date recorded by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) and the heat detections seen by satellite.
How much area did it burn?
The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 8,492 hectares (84.9 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Elko (8,536 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.8 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.