How long did the Cross Ca Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (11 August 2021). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 11 August 2021 (1 day from 11 August 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 913 hectares (9.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire entered 2 counties: Scotts Bluff (670 ha, 0.4 %); Banner (240 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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 · 2021-08-11 → 2021-08-11

Cross Ca Fire, August 2021 Scotts Bluff, Banner

Out · last detection 11 Aug 2021, 20:08 UTC

The fire started on 11 August 2021 in Scotts Bluff, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 913 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the 31th largest in Nebraska since 2016 (of 40 with a page). Number 246 in United States in 2021, of 385.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Carter Canyon · 2022 Vista Trend Ca · 2021 Buffalo Creek · 2021 Smokey · 2022

Burnt area: 913ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 1day; 11 Aug 2021 – 11 Aug 2021
Counties hit: 2; counties
Started on: 11 Aug; 2021
Heat detections: 17; in a single hotspot: 89 MW
Danger at start: 57; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 568MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Aug11 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

11 Aug 2021 · 568 MW · 17

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

The weather it burned in

34°high

31km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.2 mm on 19 Aug.

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 0.6% of the area of London (9.1 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

Scotts Bluff where it started

670 ha reached on 11 Aug

0.4 %
Banner

240 ha

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.

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)
11 Aug	34.4 °C	13 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
12 Aug after	29.6 °C	24 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
13 Aug after	30.5 °C	24 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
14 Aug after	34.6 °C	17 %	40 km/h	0.4 mm	Extreme 51
15 Aug after	33.9 °C	14 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
16 Aug after	35.2 °C	12 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
17 Aug after	36.9 °C	12 %	51 km/h	0.7 mm	Very extreme 76
18 Aug after	33.3 °C	22 %	49 km/h	0.5 mm	Extreme 64
19 Aug after	24.9 °C	51 %	50 km/h	5.2 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Aug 2021

After · 18 Aug 2021

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 · 17Every 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 Cross Ca Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (11 August 2021). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 11 August 2021 (1 day from 11 August 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 913 hectares (9.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire entered 2 counties: Scotts Bluff (670 ha, 0.4 %); Banner (240 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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.

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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What really happened?

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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.

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. 17 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.

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