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Dome Fire, August 2020 San Bernardino

Out · last detection 16 Aug 2020, 20:57 UTC

The fire started on 15 August 2020 in San Bernardino, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 17,649 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 63th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 45 in United States in 2020, of 441.

Burnt area
17,649ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
15 Aug 2020 – 15 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
15 Aug
2020
Heat detections
135
in a single hotspot: 37 MW
Danger at start
52
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
786MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Aug15 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

16

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
45km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 49 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 22 Aug.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. San Bernardino where it started
    17,785 ha reached on 16 Aug
    0.3 %

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)
15 Aug 37.2 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 52
16 Aug after 37.4 °C 10 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Aug after 37.4 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
18 Aug after 36.0 °C 12 % 45 km/h 1.6 mm Very high 42
19 Aug after 35.4 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.7 mm Extreme 50
20 Aug after 36.3 °C 10 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
21 Aug after 34.0 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.3 mm Extreme 62
22 Aug after 32.6 °C 22 % 41 km/h 1.0 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Aug 2020
After · 22 Aug 2020

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 · 135Every 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 Dome fire last?
It burned between 15 August 2020 and 15 August 2020: 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 17,649 hectares (176.5 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered San Bernardino (17,785 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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.

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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.

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.