How long did the Coldwater Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (30 May 2019). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 18 June 2019 (20 days from 30 May 2019), 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 6,801 hectares (68.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Coconino (6,723 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.7 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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.

US · United States · 2019-05-30 → 2019-06-18

Coldwater Fire, May 2019 Coconino

Out · last detection 18 Jun 2019, 20:25 UTC

The fire started on 30 May 2019 in Coconino, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 6,801 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 48th largest in Arizona since 2016 (of 380 with a page). Number 43 in United States in 2019, of 367.

Compare with…

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Burnt area: 6,801ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 20days; 30 May 2019 – 18 Jun 2019
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 30 May; 2019
Heat detections: 771; in a single hotspot: 181 MW
Danger at start: 12; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 287MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 May18 Jun

Play back 18 Jun 2019

How it evolved, day by day

31 May 3 Jun 7 Jun 10 Jun 12 Jun 13 Jun 16 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

29°high

59km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 20 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (68 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

Coconino where it started

6,723 ha reached on 31 May

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)
30 May	19.3 °C	21 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
31 May	22.6 °C	15 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
1 Jun	21.0 °C	18 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
2 Jun	20.2 °C	22 %	54 km/h	0.1 mm	High 24
3 Jun	22.7 °C	14 %	46 km/h	0.1 mm	High 24
4 Jun	22.4 °C	21 %	40 km/h	1.6 mm	Low 9
5 Jun	23.9 °C	18 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 18
6 Jun	25.2 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.4 mm	High 24
7 Jun	23.4 °C	18 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
8 Jun	23.9 °C	11 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
9 Jun	25.3 °C	14 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
10 Jun	26.1 °C	20 %	41 km/h	0.5 mm	High 31
11 Jun	27.8 °C	15 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
12 Jun	28.7 °C	11 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
13 Jun	26.9 °C	14 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
14 Jun	24.9 °C	11 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
15 Jun	25.4 °C	17 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
16 Jun	25.3 °C	18 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	High 37
17 Jun	24.3 °C	16 %	48 km/h	0.5 mm	Very high 41
18 Jun	25.3 °C	16 %	41 km/h	0.2 mm	High 37
19 Jun after	26.6 °C	9 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
20 Jun after	24.8 °C	8 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
21 Jun after	23.2 °C	17 %	66 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
22 Jun after	21.5 °C	22 %	53 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 40
23 Jun after	23.4 °C	12 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
24 Jun after	25.6 °C	11 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
25 Jun after	25.8 °C	11 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
26 Jun after	24.5 °C	20 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
27 Jun after	26.7 °C	10 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
28 Jun after	29.4 °C	17 %	58 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 50

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 May 2019

After · 25 Jun 2019

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 · 771Every 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 Coldwater Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (30 May 2019). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 18 June 2019 (20 days from 30 May 2019), 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 6,801 hectares (68.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Coconino (6,723 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.7 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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 · 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.

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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. 771 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