Easterday Fire, June 2018 Benton
The fire started on 22 June 2018 in Benton, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 517 hectares, spread across a single county.
It is the 267th largest in Washington since 2016 (of 285 with a page). Number 455 in United States in 2018, of 511.
The power measured by the satellite is low (10.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 517ha
- official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
- Duration
- 1day
- 22 Jun 2018 – 22 Jun 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 22 Jun
- 2018
- Heat detections
- 6
- in a single hotspot: 10 MW
- Danger at start
- 49
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 53MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
22 Jun 2018 · 53 MW · 6
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 3 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.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Benton where it started519 ha reached on 22 Jun0.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Jun | 32.2 °C | 20 % | 52 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 49 |
| 23 Jun after | 31.3 °C | 17 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 24 Jun after | 34.9 °C | 17 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 25 Jun after | 28.6 °C | 16 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 26 Jun after | 27.9 °C | 16 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 27 Jun after | 31.5 °C | 11 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 28 Jun after | 27.7 °C | 21 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 29 Jun after | 30.5 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.7 mm | Very high 41 |
| 30 Jun after | 31.3 °C | 19 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 1 Jul after | 30.4 °C | 15 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 2 Jul after | 26.0 °C | 15 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 6Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,844 haLake Wallula UmatillaJuly 2018 · 7 days · 7 km away
- 6,984 haHat Rock UmatillaJune 2023 · 2 days · 8 km away
- 3,550 haJuniper Canyon UmatillaAugust 2025 · 1 day · 8 km away
- 3,285 haTwin Sisters Walla WallaJune 2026 · 1 day · 12 km away
- 1,879 haBoffer BentonAugust 2018 · 2 days · 19 km away
- 3,853 haHatch Grade Walla WallaSeptember 2026 · 2 days · 25 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Easterday fire last?
- It burned between 22 June 2018 and 22 June 2018: 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 517 hectares (5.2 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
- Which counties burned?
- The fire only entered Benton (519 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.2 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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
- NIFC · National Interagency Fire Center ↗
- InciWeb · Incident Information System ↗
- MTBS · Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity ↗
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), official.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 6 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.
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.