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Cobb Fire, December 2021 Texas

Out · last detection 15 Dec 2021, 20:46 UTC

The fire started on 15 December 2021 in Texas, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 2,891 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 47th largest in Oklahoma since 2016 (of 284 with a page). Number 133 in United States in 2021, of 385.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Clauson Fire · 2019

Burnt area
2,891ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
≈ 1day
15 Dec 2021 – 15 Dec 2021
Counties hit
1
counties
Started on
15 Dec
2021
Heat detections
86
in a single hotspot: 118 MW
Danger at start
126
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
2.9GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Dec15 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

15 Dec 2021 · 2,933 MW · 86

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

The weather it burned in

21°high
116km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 1.8% of the area of London (29 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

  1. Texas where it started
    2,876 ha reached on 15 Dec
    0.5 %

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 area0.40 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.40 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)
15 Dec 20.9 °C 10 % 116 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 126
16 Dec after 9.2 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Dec after 10.9 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Dec after 3.1 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
19 Dec after 11.4 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 Dec after 12.5 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
21 Dec after 17.8 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Dec after 17.7 °C 10 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Dec after 19.9 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Dec after 22.5 °C 23 % 76 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
25 Dec after 18.2 °C 21 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Dec 2021
After · 22 Dec 2021

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 · 86Every 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 Cobb Fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (15 December 2021). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 15 December 2021 (1 day from 15 December 2021), 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 2,891 hectares (28.9 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Texas (2,876 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 20.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 116 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 126, class Very 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 ›

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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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. 86 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.