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Elm 2 Fire, May 2017 Fresno

Out · last detection 19 May 2017, 21:16 UTC

The fire started on 18 May 2017 in Fresno, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 4,360 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 139th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 158 in United States in 2017, of 619.

Burnt area
4,360ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
18 May 2017 – 18 May 2017
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
18 May
2017
Heat detections
44
in a single hotspot: 131 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Energy released
893MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

19 May 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 May18 May

How it evolved, day by day

1819

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
39km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Fresno where it started
    4,317 ha reached on 18 May
    0.3 %

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)
18 May 27.5 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 May after 32.4 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 May after 33.0 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 May after 33.9 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 May after 34.0 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 May after 34.3 °C 19 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
24 May after 29.2 °C 16 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
25 May after 20.0 °C 43 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 May after 21.4 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 May after 28.6 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
28 May after 31.7 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 May after 32.4 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 May 2017
After · 25 May 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 · 44Every 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 Elm 2 fire last?
It burned between 18 May 2017 and 18 May 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 4,360 hectares (43.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Fresno (4,317 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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

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.