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Clark County Fire, March 2018 Clark

Out · last detection 5 Mar 2018, 18:57 UTC

The fire started on 5 March 2018 in Clark, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 445 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 79th largest in Kansas since 2016 (of 84 with a page). Number 494 in United States in 2018, of 511.

Burnt area
445ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
5 Mar 2018 – 5 Mar 2018
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
5 Mar
2018
Heat detections
19
in a single hotspot: 81 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
645MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Mar5 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

5

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

The weather it burned in

14°high
66km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 395 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Clark where it started
    445 ha reached on 5 Mar
    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)
5 Mar 14.2 °C 9 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Mar after 12.1 °C 15 % 87 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
7 Mar after 13.4 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
8 Mar after 21.3 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Mar after 22.9 °C 10 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
10 Mar after 21.4 °C 18 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Mar after 11.6 °C 31 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Mar after 12.6 °C 25 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
13 Mar after 13.6 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
14 Mar after 21.4 °C 18 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Mar after 28.1 °C 19 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Feb 2018
After · 12 Mar 2018

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 · 19Every 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 Clark County fire last?
It burned between 5 March 2018 and 5 March 2018: 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 445 hectares (4.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Clark (445 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 14.2 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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.