How long did the Elk fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 June 2019 to 15 June 2019 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 June 2019 to 6 June 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 511 hectares (5.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Catron (503 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.1 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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.

US · United States · 2019-06-06 → 2019-06-15

Elk Fire, June 2019 Catron

Out · last detection 15 Jun 2019, 08:22 UTC

The fire started on 6 June 2019 in Catron, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 511 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 180th largest in New Mexico since 2016 (of 204 with a page). Number 320 in United States in 2019, of 367.

The power measured by the satellite is low (18.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

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Burnt area: 511ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: 10days; 6 Jun 2019 – 15 Jun 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 6 Jun; 2019
Heat detections: 39; in a single hotspot: 18 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 24MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Jun15 Jun

Play back 15 Jun 2019

How it evolved, day by day

7 Jun 9 Jun 11 Jun 13 Jun 15 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

28°high

58km/h · peak gust

4%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 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?

It burned the equivalent of 0.3% of the area of London (5.1 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Catron where it started

503 ha reached on 7 Jun

0.0 %

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)
6 Jun	25.8 °C	10 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
7 Jun	26.4 °C	8 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
8 Jun	26.7 °C	7 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
9 Jun	28.1 °C	4 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
10 Jun	19.4 °C	22 %	41 km/h	8.2 mm	Very low 5
11 Jun	26.1 °C	11 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
12 Jun	27.3 °C	8 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
13 Jun	27.3 °C	13 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
14 Jun	27.1 °C	5 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
15 Jun	24.7 °C	10 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
16 Jun after	25.7 °C	13 %	34 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 39
17 Jun after	23.9 °C	12 %	38 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 43
18 Jun after	25.5 °C	11 %	47 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 46
19 Jun after	25.7 °C	10 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
20 Jun after	27.0 °C	7 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
21 Jun after	26.0 °C	5 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
22 Jun after	22.5 °C	12 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
23 Jun after	23.3 °C	10 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
24 Jun after	25.8 °C	8 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
25 Jun after	27.7 °C	6 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 May 2019

After · 22 Jun 2019

Before After

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 · 39Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

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Frequently asked questions

How long did the Elk fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 June 2019 to 15 June 2019 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 June 2019 to 6 June 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 511 hectares (5.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Catron (503 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.1 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
NIFC · Fire maps ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.

How we know this

Perimeter: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), official.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 June 2019 to 6 June 2019. 39 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.

Where it burned