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Fraser Valley B fire, August 2018 Fraser Valley B

Out · last detection 7 Sept 2018, 20:55 UTC

The fire started on 4 August 2018 in Fraser Valley B, Canada, and satellites saw it burning for 35 days. Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 5,949 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single census subdivision.

It is the 159th largest in British Columbia since 2016 (of 448 with a page). Number 65 in Canada in 2018, of 212.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Border 2 · 2026Fraser Valley B · 2026Fraser Valley B · 2025Okanagan-Similkameen H · 2025

Burnt area
5,949ha
official perimeter (CWFIS)
Duration
35days
4 Aug 2018 – 7 Sept 2018
Census subdivisions hit
1
municipalities
Started on
4 Aug
2018
Heat detections
584
in a single hotspot: 187 MW
Danger at start
5
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
215MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Aug7 Sept
7 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

6 Aug 2018 · 7 MW · 1 7 Aug 2018 · 25 MW · 6 8 Aug 2018 · 72 MW · 12 9 Aug 2018 · 2,310 MW · 66 10 Aug 2018 · 297 MW · 55 11 Aug 2018 · 112 MW · 58 12 Aug 2018 · 4 MW · 1 13 Aug 2018 · 2 MW · 2 14 Aug 2018 · 51 MW · 13 15 Aug 2018 · 303 MW · 16 16 Aug 2018 · 259 MW · 29 17 Aug 2018 · 581 MW · 12 18 Aug 2018 · 11 MW · 5 19 Aug 2018 · 46 MW · 9 20 Aug 2018 · 378 MW · 38 21 Aug 2018 · 201 MW · 48 22 Aug 2018 · 539 MW · 62 23 Aug 2018 · 212 MW · 95 25 Aug 2018 · 1 MW · 1 30 Aug 2018 · 3 MW · 2 1 Sept 2018 · 14 MW · 4 2 Sept 2018 · 12 MW · 3 4 Sept 2018 · 17 MW · 5 5 Sept 2018 · 42 MW · 15 6 Sept 2018 · 66 MW · 13 7 Sept 2018 · 31 MW · 13
6 Aug 9 Aug 10 Aug 14 Aug 18 Aug 22 Aug 1 Sept 6 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

30°high
63km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.5 mm on 8 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (59 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 census subdivision

  1. Fraser Valley B where it started
    5,916 ha reached on 6 Aug
    1.9 %

Burnt area inside each census subdivision, 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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)
4 Aug 22.1 °C 45 % 32 km/h 1.7 mm Very low 5
5 Aug 25.5 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
6 Aug 25.3 °C 31 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
7 Aug 28.1 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
8 Aug 30.5 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Aug 30.5 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
10 Aug 28.4 °C 35 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
11 Aug 17.9 °C 74 % 55 km/h 5.5 mm Very low 0
12 Aug 16.9 °C 62 % 39 km/h 1.8 mm Very low 1
13 Aug 22.7 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
14 Aug 25.3 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
15 Aug 24.6 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
16 Aug 23.4 °C 46 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
17 Aug 20.4 °C 51 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
18 Aug 24.0 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
19 Aug 21.9 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
20 Aug 26.0 °C 27 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
21 Aug 28.0 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
22 Aug 23.8 °C 34 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
23 Aug 17.5 °C 57 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
24 Aug 15.2 °C 64 % 32 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 12
25 Aug 11.4 °C 79 % 27 km/h 1.8 mm Very low 3
26 Aug 11.0 °C 85 % 29 km/h 5.6 mm Very low 0
27 Aug 20.2 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
28 Aug 21.3 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
29 Aug 17.3 °C 53 % 63 km/h 1.2 mm Low 7
30 Aug 15.0 °C 65 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm Low 7
31 Aug 15.5 °C 56 % 53 km/h 0.1 mm Low 9
1 Sept 15.5 °C 52 % 39 km/h 0.7 mm Low 7
2 Sept 16.7 °C 51 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
3 Sept 17.0 °C 40 % 34 km/h 1.2 mm Low 6
4 Sept 20.0 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
5 Sept 23.1 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
6 Sept 24.1 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
7 Sept 20.5 °C 46 % 62 km/h 3.0 mm Very low 4
8 Sept after 15.0 °C 57 % 42 km/h 4.5 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Jul 2018
After · 14 Sept 2018

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 · 584Every 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 Canada ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Fraser Valley B fire last?
It burned between 4 August 2018 and 7 September 2018: 35 days, according to the dates recorded by Canada’s CWFIS and the heat detections seen by satellite.
How much area did it burn?
The official perimeter mapped by Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) is 5,949 hectares (59.5 km²). Other tallies, such as those of provincial agencies, may give slightly different figures.
Which census subdivisions burned?
The fire only entered Fraser Valley B (5,916 ha, 1.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.5 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the official burnt perimeter of Canada’s CWFIS (NBAC, Natural Resources Canada) or, for the current season and until NBAC publishes it, the one rebuilt by GWIS (Copernicus); from NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots; and from the administrative boundaries of Canada. 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

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: NBAC (Natural Resources Canada), official.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 584 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter is official: it comes from the National Burned Area Composite (NBAC) of the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS), Natural Resources Canada, which maps it on satellite imagery and publishes it under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Until NBAC publishes the current season, this year’s fires carry the perimeter rebuilt from heat detections by GWIS (Copernicus, CC BY 4.0), which is approximate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Census subdivision boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per census subdivision is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from official figures.