How long did the Chitanana Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (20 June 2022). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 15 July 2022 (26 days from 20 June 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 42,768 hectares (427.7 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Yukon-Koyukuk (41,999 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.9 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, class 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.

US · United States · 2022-06-20 → 2022-07-15

Chitanana Fire, June 2022 Yukon-Koyukuk

Out · last detection 15 Jul 2022, 11:24 UTC

The fire started on 20 June 2022 in Yukon-Koyukuk, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 42,768 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 15th largest in Alaska since 2016 (of 472 with a page). Number 12 in United States in 2022, of 493.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mooseheart · 2018 Lloyd Mountain · 2019 Hay · 2025

Burnt area: 42,768ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 26days; 20 Jun 2022 – 15 Jul 2022
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 20 Jun; 2022
Heat detections: 3,665; in a single hotspot: 558 MW
Danger at start: 1; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.5GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jun15 Jul

Play back 15 Jul 2022

How it evolved, day by day

20 Jun 24 Jun 28 Jun 2 Jul 6 Jul 8 Jul 10 Jul 15 Jul

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

40km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.9 mm on 16 Jul.

This area had burned before

18% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,466 ha in 2018, 36 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 27% of the area of London (428 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 county

Yukon-Koyukuk where it started

41,999 ha reached on 20 Jun

0.1 %

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 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)
20 Jun	24.3 °C	36 %	19 km/h	3.1 mm	Very low 1
21 Jun	25.7 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
22 Jun	24.8 °C	29 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
23 Jun	19.8 °C	41 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
24 Jun	24.0 °C	34 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
25 Jun	26.8 °C	33 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
26 Jun	26.0 °C	30 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
27 Jun	24.0 °C	39 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
28 Jun	22.4 °C	40 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
29 Jun	25.4 °C	29 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
30 Jun	27.4 °C	29 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
1 Jul	28.6 °C	28 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
2 Jul	29.9 °C	29 %	24 km/h	0.1 mm	High 22
3 Jul	28.5 °C	31 %	22 km/h	0.1 mm	High 22
4 Jul	26.6 °C	44 %	27 km/h	4.0 mm	Very low 4
5 Jul	25.5 °C	46 %	26 km/h	2.5 mm	Very low 4
6 Jul	26.6 °C	50 %	28 km/h	6.1 mm	Very low 2
7 Jul	24.1 °C	44 %	19 km/h	0.1 mm	Very low 4
8 Jul	27.1 °C	30 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
9 Jul	27.1 °C	29 %	24 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 16
10 Jul	26.7 °C	44 %	31 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 12
11 Jul	28.0 °C	34 %	30 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 18
12 Jul	25.2 °C	37 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
13 Jul	20.9 °C	34 %	40 km/h	1.4 mm	Low 11
14 Jul	22.1 °C	26 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
15 Jul	18.5 °C	49 %	27 km/h	7.9 mm	Very low 1
16 Jul after	20.3 °C	44 %	36 km/h	2.9 mm	Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Jun 2022

After · 22 Jul 2022

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 · 3,665Every 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 United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chitanana Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (20 June 2022). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 15 July 2022 (26 days from 20 June 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 42,768 hectares (427.7 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Yukon-Koyukuk (41,999 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.9 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, class 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
NIFC · Fire maps ↗

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

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What really happened?

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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. 3,665 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 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.

Where it burned