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Drops Fire, July 2020 Lincoln

Out · last detection 31 Jul 2020, 20:59 UTC

The fire started on 31 July 2020 in Lincoln, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,549 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 169th largest in Idaho since 2016 (of 379 with a page). Number 208 in United States in 2020, of 441.

Burnt area
1,549ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
31 Jul 2020 – 31 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
31 Jul
2020
Heat detections
81
in a single hotspot: 152 MW
Danger at start
80
Very extreme · FWI index
Energy released
3.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Jul31 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

31

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
43km/h · peak gust
3%lowest humidity

It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 316 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Lincoln where it started
    1,549 ha reached on 31 Jul
    0.5 %

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)
31 Jul 41.4 °C 3 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 80
1 Aug after 40.7 °C 3 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
2 Aug after 40.5 °C 3 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
3 Aug after 36.6 °C 10 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 86
4 Aug after 35.3 °C 7 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
5 Aug after 36.8 °C 4 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
6 Aug after 34.9 °C 12 % 48 km/h 0.2 mm Very extreme 71
7 Aug after 29.7 °C 10 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
8 Aug after 32.9 °C 9 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
9 Aug after 33.2 °C 14 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
10 Aug after 33.2 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Jul 2020
After · 7 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 · 81Every 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 Drops fire last?
It burned between 31 July 2020 and 31 July 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 1,549 hectares (15.5 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Lincoln (1,549 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.4 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 80, class Very 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.