Skip to content
worldfires
US · United States · →

Davis Fire, September 2024 Washoe

Out · last detection 8 Sept 2024, 20:33 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2024 in Washoe, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 2,202 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 106th largest in Nevada since 2016 (of 237 with a page). Number 142 in United States in 2024, of 371.

Burnt area
2,202ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
7 Sept 2024 – 7 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
7 Sept
2024
Heat detections
132
in a single hotspot: 454 MW
Danger at start
57
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
5.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept7 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

8

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
73km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.6 mm on 16 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Washoe where it started
    2,216 ha reached on 8 Sept
    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)
7 Sept 31.6 °C 10 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
8 Sept after 30.4 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Sept after 30.5 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Sept after 29.4 °C 9 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Sept after 24.3 °C 15 % 73 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
12 Sept after 22.0 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Sept after 25.8 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Sept after 27.8 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Sept after 22.8 °C 21 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
16 Sept after 13.8 °C 41 % 38 km/h 4.6 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Aug 2024
After · 14 Sept 2024

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 10 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak17 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1024 µg/m³
Optical depth0.19
567891011121314
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 · 132Every 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 Davis fire last?
It burned between 7 September 2024 and 7 September 2024: 1 day, according to the start date recorded by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) and the heat detections seen by satellite.
How much area did it burn?
The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 2,202 hectares (22.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Washoe (2,216 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 73 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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

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.

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.