How long did the Elk Ridge Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (15 August 2016). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 3 September 2016 (20 days from 15 August 2016), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 510 hectares (5.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Idaho (509 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 27.4 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class 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.

US · United States · 2016-08-15 → 2016-09-03

Elk Ridge Fire, August 2016 Idaho

Out · last detection 3 Sept 2016, 10:31 UTC

The fire started on 15 August 2016 in Idaho, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 510 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 335th largest in Idaho since 2016 (of 379 with a page). Number 421 in United States in 2016, of 475.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Moose · 2016 Moose Creek 1 · 2017 Lone Pine · 2017 Roaring Lion · 2016

Burnt area: 510ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 20days; 15 Aug 2016 – 3 Sept 2016
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 15 Aug; 2016
Heat detections: 163; in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start: 24; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 64MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Aug3 Sept

Play back 3 Sept 2016

How it evolved, day by day

16 Aug 18 Aug 19 Aug 22 Aug 26 Aug 29 Aug 1 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

27°high

59km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.3 mm on 4 Sept.

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 county

Idaho where it started

509 ha reached on 16 Aug

0.0 %

Burnt area inside each county, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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	26.6 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
16 Aug	27.1 °C	14 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
17 Aug	27.4 °C	16 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
18 Aug	24.3 °C	22 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
19 Aug	21.0 °C	16 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
20 Aug	24.5 °C	12 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
21 Aug	25.6 °C	11 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
22 Aug	17.5 °C	22 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
23 Aug	17.1 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
24 Aug	17.1 °C	30 %	38 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 14
25 Aug	19.4 °C	18 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
26 Aug	20.7 °C	16 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Aug	23.2 °C	19 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
28 Aug	22.5 °C	20 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
29 Aug	26.3 °C	13 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
30 Aug	25.2 °C	12 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
31 Aug	22.6 °C	21 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
1 Sept	22.3 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
2 Sept	11.7 °C	42 %	45 km/h	0.4 mm	High 23
3 Sept	14.2 °C	27 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
4 Sept after	9.4 °C	61 %	32 km/h	5.3 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Aug 2016

After · 10 Sept 2016

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 · 163Every 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 Ridge Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (15 August 2016). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 3 September 2016 (20 days from 15 August 2016), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 510 hectares (5.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Idaho (509 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 27.4 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
NIFC · Fire maps ↗

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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How we know this

Perimeter: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), official.
The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 163 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.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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