Burned area
satellite only16,913ha
Perimeter published by MTBS (USGS/USFS).
- Source
- MTBS (USGS/USFS)
- Date
- 16 Oct 2016 – 16 Oct 2016
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
US · United States ·
Cottonwood Ca Fire, October 2016 Jackson, Pennington
Out · last detection 16 Oct 2016, 20:09 UTC
The fire started on 16 October 2016 in Jackson, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 16,913 hectares, spread across 2 counties.
It is the 2th largest in South Dakota since 2016 (of 48 with a page). Number 18 in United States in 2016, of 475.
Use this data
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Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only1day
16 Oct 2016 to 16 Oct 2016: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- MTBS (USGS/USFS) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 16 Oct 2016, 20:09 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only16 Oct 2016
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- MTBS (USGS/USFS) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 16 Oct 2016
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only152
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 266 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 16 Oct 2016 – 16 Oct 2016
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only5,831MW
Total radiative power on 16 October 2016; hotspots that day: 152.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 16 Oct 2016
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model68.4FWI · extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 4.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 16 Oct 2016, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model28.3°C · 14% RH
High of 28.3 °C and minimum humidity of 14% on 16 October 2016; gusts of 65 km/h on 16 October 2016.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 16 Oct 2016 – 16 Oct 2016
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
Living inside
model≈ 20people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 1.3 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2015).
- Source
- GHSL R2023A · JRC
- Date
- calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
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.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 16,913 ha
- Dates
- 16 Oct 2016 – 16 Oct 2016
- Name
- Cottonwood Ca
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/cottonwood-ca-fire-2016-10?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire cottonwood-ca-fire-2016-10.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-10-16 | 152 | 5,831 | 28.3 | 10.7 | 14 | 38.3 | 64.8 | 0 | 68.4 | extremo | 1 |
| 2016-10-17 | 0 | 0 | 19.4 | 8.1 | 33 | 24.2 | 40 | 0.3 | 25 | alto | 0 |
| 2016-10-18 | 0 | 0 | 17.6 | 3.9 | 27 | 28.2 | 45.4 | 0 | 27.5 | alto | 0 |
| 2016-10-19 | 0 | 0 | 12.7 | 5 | 58 | 12.4 | 24.5 | 4.5 | 13.5 | moderado | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: MTBS (USGS/USFS), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 16,913ha
- official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
- Duration
- ≈ 1day
- 16 Oct 2016 – 16 Oct 2016
- Counties hit
- 2
- counties
- Started on
- 16 Oct
- 2016
- Heat detections
- 152
- in a single hotspot: 266 MW
- Danger at start
- 68
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 5.8GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
16 Oct16 Oct
How it evolved, day by day
16 Oct 2016 · 5,831 MW · 152
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
28°high
65km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity
It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.5 mm on 19 Oct.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each county
-
Jackson where it started16,896 ha reached on 16 Oct3.5 %
-
40 ha reached on 16 Oct0.0 %
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 2015Built-up area1.3 ha
Residents≈ 20
Inside the perimeter there were about 1.3 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
Started with Extreme FWI: 36 % of the area in United States Strong wind: 27 % of the area in United States Very dry air: 40 % of the area in United States
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Oct | 28.3 °C | 14 % | 65 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 17 Oct after | 19.4 °C | 33 % | 40 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 25 |
| 18 Oct after | 17.6 °C | 27 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 19 Oct after | 12.7 °C | 58 % | 24 km/h | 4.5 mm | Moderate 14 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 68.4, a minimum humidity of 14% and 4 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 11.
FWI at the start
68.4
Minimum humidity
14 %
Days without rain
4
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Cottonwood Ca Fire, October 2016
16,913 ha
1 day
FWI 68.4
Min. humidity 14 %
Wanblee Timber Fire, July 2017
2,016 ha
3 days
FWI 67.7
Min. humidity 17 %
38 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.0 mm on 19 Jul.
South Fork Fire, June 2026
16,064 ha
6 days
FWI 62.2
Min. humidity 14 %
194 km away, in 2026
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.2 mm on 20 Jun.
Wilson Road Fire, June 2020
665 ha
2 days
FWI 72.3
Min. humidity 18 %
108 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.1 mm on 18 Jun.
Casino Fire, July 2022
4,687 ha
2 days
FWI 77.1
Min. humidity 15 %
123 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.1 mm on 26 Jul.
Dry Creek Ca Fire, March 2021
3,293 ha
1 day
FWI 55.0
Min. humidity 15 %
75 km away, in 2021
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 28.1 mm on 6 Apr.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 11. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
4.5 mmfirst rain
19 Oct3 days after it ended
65km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 16 Oct, and on 19 Oct 4.5 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 9 Oct 2016
After · 23 Oct 2016
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · 152Every 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cottonwood Ca Fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (16 October 2016). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 16 October 2016 (1 day from 16 October 2016), 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 16,913 hectares (169.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
- Which counties burned?
- The fire entered 2 counties: Jackson (16,896 ha, 3.5 %); Pennington (40 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 28.3 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, 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
- NIFC · National Interagency Fire Center ↗
- InciWeb · Incident Information System ↗
- MTBS · Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity ↗
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 With cross-checks and a citable version
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.
Report an error
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. 152 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 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.