How long did the Cooks Peak Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (17 April 2022). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 1 May 2022 (15 days from 17 April 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 24,744 hectares (247.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire entered 2 counties: Mora (12,840 ha, 2.6 %); Colfax (11,929 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 23.9 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 101 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, class 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.

US · United States · 2022-04-17 → 2022-05-01

Cooks Peak Fire, April 2022 Mora, Colfax

Out · last detection 1 May 2022, 19:35 UTC

The fire started on 17 April 2022 in Colfax, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 24,744 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the 5th largest in New Mexico since 2016 (of 204 with a page). Number 22 in United States in 2022, of 493.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Morris Creek · 2018 Naranjos · 2020 Charette · 2018 Ute Park · 2018

Burnt area: 24,744ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 15days; 17 Apr 2022 – 1 May 2022
Counties hit: 2; counties
Started on: 17 Apr; 2022
Heat detections: 1,470; in a single hotspot: 1,353 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 4.1GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Apr1 May

Play back 1 May 2022

How it evolved, day by day

18 Apr 20 Apr 22 Apr 24 Apr 28 Apr 30 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

24°high

101km/h · peak gust

5%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days 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?

It burned the equivalent of 16% of the area of London (247 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

Mora

12,840 ha reached on 18 Apr

2.6 %
Colfax where it started

11,929 ha reached on 20 Apr

1.2 %

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 area0.45 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.45 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)
17 Apr	19.6 °C	9 %	67 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
18 Apr	15.7 °C	22 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
19 Apr	19.9 °C	14 %	73 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
20 Apr	21.5 °C	9 %	70 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
21 Apr	23.9 °C	9 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Apr	22.9 °C	9 %	101 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 58
23 Apr	13.3 °C	11 %	76 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
24 Apr	13.0 °C	11 %	45 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32
25 Apr	13.0 °C	16 %	38 km/h	7.8 mm	Very low 1
26 Apr	17.3 °C	16 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
27 Apr	20.3 °C	27 %	52 km/h	2.3 mm	Low 6
28 Apr	21.2 °C	9 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
29 Apr	18.3 °C	6 %	77 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
30 Apr	19.8 °C	8 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
1 May	21.6 °C	5 %	68 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 41
2 May after	19.1 °C	13 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
3 May after	21.1 °C	11 %	67 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 42
4 May after	14.4 °C	12 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
5 May after	18.9 °C	13 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
6 May after	23.8 °C	8 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
7 May after	26.4 °C	8 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
8 May after	23.8 °C	10 %	76 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
9 May after	24.1 °C	9 %	88 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
10 May after	25.4 °C	6 %	66 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
11 May after	25.7 °C	6 %	71 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Apr 2022

After · 8 May 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 · 1,470Every 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 Cooks Peak Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (17 April 2022). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 1 May 2022 (15 days from 17 April 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 24,744 hectares (247.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire entered 2 counties: Mora (12,840 ha, 2.6 %); Colfax (11,929 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 23.9 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 101 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, class 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

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. 1,470 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