Emigrant Fire, June 2018 Elko
The fire started on 27 June 2018 in Elko, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 59 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 634 hectares, spread across a single county.
It is the 193th largest in Nevada since 2016 (of 237 with a page). Number 422 in United States in 2018, of 511.
Compare with…
We have the official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC) for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by county is there.
- Burnt area
- 634ha
- official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
- Duration
- 59days
- 27 Jun 2018 – 24 Aug 2018
- Counties hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 27 Jun
- 2018
- Danger at start
- 53
- Extreme · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 8 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 county
-
Elko where it started624 ha0.0 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Jun | 33.9 °C | 7 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 28 Jun | 28.6 °C | 9 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 29 Jun | 25.1 °C | 16 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 30 Jun | 26.7 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 1 Jul | 30.7 °C | 11 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 2 Jul | 31.1 °C | 11 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 3 Jul | 27.1 °C | 14 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 4 Jul | 33.8 °C | 5 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 5 Jul | 34.5 °C | 6 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 6 Jul | 33.6 °C | 7 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 7 Jul | 34.7 °C | 11 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
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.
Other fires nearby
- 5,264 haCounty Line ElkoAugust 2018 · 2 days · 6 km away
- 2,647 haCole Creek ElkoJune 2017 · 3 days · 9 km away
- 2,458 haCedar ElkoJuly 2020 · 3 days · 29 km away
- 1,920 haRed Springs ElkoJune 2017 · 1 day · 31 km away
- 3,911 haMaggie ElkoSeptember 2016 · 2 days · 33 km away
- 1,689 haSheep Creek Canyon EurekaJuly 2025 · 1 day · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Emigrant Fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 June 2018 to 24 August 2018 (59 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 June 2018 to 27 June 2018.
- How much area did it burn?
- The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 634 hectares (6.3 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
- Which counties burned?
- The fire only entered Elko (624 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
- NIFC · National Interagency Fire Center ↗
- InciWeb · Incident Information System ↗
- MTBS · Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity ↗
Satellite cross-check
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.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 June 2018 to 27 June 2018. No 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.