How long did the Foster fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 May 2022 to 30 May 2022 (2 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 May 2022 to 29 May 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 3,082 hectares (30.8 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Hidalgo (3,082 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.9 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 74 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 88, class Very 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 · 2022-05-29 → 2022-05-30

Foster Fire, May 2022 Hidalgo

Out · last detection 30 May 2022, 20:30 UTC

The fire started on 29 May 2022 in Hidalgo, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 3,082 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 50th largest in New Mexico since 2016 (of 204 with a page). Number 148 in United States in 2022, of 493.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Miller · 2019 Baker Canyon · 2016 Guadalupe Pass · 2016 Ok Bar · 2018

Burnt area: 3,082ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: 2days; 29 May 2022 – 30 May 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 29 May; 2022
Heat detections: 151; in a single hotspot: 205 MW
Danger at start: 88; Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 3.4GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 May30 May

Play back 30 May 2022

How it evolved, day by day

29 May 30 May

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

The weather it burned in

30°high

74km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 9 Jun.

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 1.9% of the area of London (31 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

Hidalgo where it started

3,082 ha reached on 29 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)
29 May	29.9 °C	9 %	74 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 88
30 May	29.3 °C	10 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 73
31 May after	31.4 °C	10 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
1 Jun after	32.9 °C	8 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
2 Jun after	33.6 °C	9 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
3 Jun after	31.9 °C	9 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 70
4 Jun after	32.2 °C	8 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
5 Jun after	32.5 °C	8 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
6 Jun after	34.2 °C	13 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
7 Jun after	34.7 °C	11 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
8 Jun after	35.4 °C	14 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
9 Jun after	34.3 °C	13 %	38 km/h	1.1 mm	Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 May 2022

After · 6 Jun 2022

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 · 151Every 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

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Foster fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 May 2022 to 30 May 2022 (2 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 May 2022 to 29 May 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 3,082 hectares (30.8 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Hidalgo (3,082 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.9 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 74 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 88, class Very 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.

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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 29 May 2022 to 29 May 2022. 151 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