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Dark Fire, July 2023 Catron

Out · last detection 30 Jul 2023, 20:45 UTC

The fire started on 13 July 2023 in Catron, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,689 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 87th largest in New Mexico since 2016 (of 204 with a page). Number 97 in United States in 2023, of 305.

Compare with…

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Burnt area
1,689ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
18days
13 Jul 2023 – 30 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
13 Jul
2023
Heat detections
101
in a single hotspot: 44 MW
Danger at start
8
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
58MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Jul30 Jul
30 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

16 Jul 2023 · 108 MW · 10 17 Jul 2023 · 45 MW · 7 18 Jul 2023 · 14 MW · 11 19 Jul 2023 · 189 MW · 15 20 Jul 2023 · 16 MW · 15 21 Jul 2023 · 5 MW · 4 23 Jul 2023 · 34 MW · 9 24 Jul 2023 · 132 MW · 17 25 Jul 2023 · 33 MW · 12 30 Jul 2023 · 4 MW · 1
16 Jul 18 Jul 19 Jul 20 Jul 23 Jul 25 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
53km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.8 mm on 2 Aug.

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 1.1% of the area of London (17 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 town

  1. Catron where it started
    1,682 ha reached on 16 Jul
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each county, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
13 Jul 27.4 °C 29 % 34 km/h 2.3 mm Low 8
14 Jul 29.4 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
15 Jul 31.0 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Jul 31.7 °C 9 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
17 Jul 31.4 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 38
18 Jul 31.7 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Jul 30.7 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Jul 31.0 °C 15 % 36 km/h 1.4 mm High 30
21 Jul 29.1 °C 19 % 53 km/h 1.1 mm High 35
22 Jul 28.5 °C 23 % 38 km/h 2.0 mm Moderate 17
23 Jul 25.6 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
24 Jul 29.1 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Jul 30.0 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.8 mm High 30
26 Jul 30.2 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.8 mm High 34
27 Jul 29.5 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
28 Jul 29.5 °C 21 % 25 km/h 2.8 mm Moderate 13
29 Jul 27.7 °C 26 % 41 km/h 2.3 mm Moderate 13
30 Jul 25.6 °C 28 % 36 km/h 2.0 mm Low 11
31 Jul after 24.5 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 17
1 Aug after 24.6 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
2 Aug after 27.1 °C 25 % 37 km/h 2.8 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Jul 2023
After · 6 Aug 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 16 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak26 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1038 µg/m³
Optical depth0.69
111213141516
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 101Every 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 Dark fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 July 2023 to 30 July 2023 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 July 2023 to 13 July 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 1,689 hectares (16.9 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Catron (1,682 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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

Satellite cross-check

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
What do you think is wrong?

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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 13 July 2023 to 13 July 2023. 101 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.