Ferngully Fire, July 2022 Potter
The fire started on 3 July 2022 in Potter, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 772 hectares, spread across a single county.
It is the 214th largest in Texas since 2016 (of 327 with a page). Number 356 in United States in 2022, of 493.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 772ha
- official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
- Duration
- 1day
- 3 Jul 2022 – 3 Jul 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 3 Jul
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 4
- in a single hotspot: 38 MW
- Danger at start
- 64
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 109MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
3 Jul 2022 · 109 MW · 4
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 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 5 Jul.
This area had burned before
37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 288 ha in 2018.
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
-
Potter where it started774 ha reached on 3 Jul0.3 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Jul | 36.0 °C | 22 % | 48 km/h | 0.2 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 4 Jul after | 36.6 °C | 23 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 5 Jul after | 37.9 °C | 24 % | 50 km/h | 1.0 mm | Very high 48 |
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 · 4Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,517 haOld Muddy Rd PotterMarch 2018 · 4 days · 5 km away
- 5,557 haLit Ranch OldhamFebruary 2017 · 2 days · 18 km away
- 4,431 haParker Creek HartleyDecember 2021 · 1 day · 22 km away
- 7,116 haCounty Line HartleyMarch 2018 · 5 days · 25 km away
- 3,182 haChanning HartleyFebruary 2019 · 1 day · 27 km away
- 9,780 haLittle Highline PotterApril 2022 · 2 days · 34 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ferngully fire last?
- It burned between 3 July 2022 and 3 July 2022: 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 772 hectares (7.7 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
- Which counties burned?
- The fire only entered Potter (774 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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
- 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. 4 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.