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Draw Fire, July 2017 Churchill

Out · last detection 9 Jul 2017, 20:20 UTC

The fire started on 8 July 2017 in Churchill, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 10,948 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 23th largest in Nevada since 2016 (of 237 with a page). Number 76 in United States in 2017, of 619.

Burnt area
10,948ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
8 Jul 2017 – 8 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
8 Jul
2017
Heat detections
282
in a single hotspot: 497 MW
Danger at start
58
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
5.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

9 Jul 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jul8 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

89

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
50km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Churchill where it started
    10,955 ha reached on 8 Jul
    0.8 %

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)
8 Jul 37.4 °C 7 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
9 Jul after 35.1 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
10 Jul after 34.8 °C 8 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
11 Jul after 32.4 °C 5 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
12 Jul after 33.6 °C 6 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
13 Jul after 33.9 °C 7 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Jul after 36.5 °C 8 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
15 Jul after 34.6 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
16 Jul after 33.2 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
17 Jul after 33.7 °C 9 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
18 Jul after 33.9 °C 7 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
19 Jul after 32.8 °C 7 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
20 Jul after 31.6 °C 4 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
21 Jul after 33.4 °C 5 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
22 Jul after 35.3 °C 6 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Jul after 37.1 °C 6 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
24 Jul after 33.4 °C 13 % 49 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Jul 2017
After · 15 Jul 2017

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 · 282Every 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 Draw fire last?
It burned between 8 July 2017 and 8 July 2017: 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 10,948 hectares (109.5 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Churchill (10,955 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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.