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Full Moon Fire, May 2022 Polk

Out · last measured on 15 May 2022

The fire started on 15 May 2022 in Polk, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 444 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 133th largest in Florida since 2016 (of 148 with a page). Number 475 in United States in 2022, of 493.

Burnt area
444ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
15 May 2022 – 15 May 2022
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
15 May
2022
Heat detections
15
in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Danger at start
17
Moderate · FWI index

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 May15 May

The weather it burned in

34°high
35km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 19.3 mm on 20 May.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6 ha in 2021.

What happened to each town

  1. Polk where it started
    446 ha reached on 17 May
    0.1 %

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)
15 May 33.8 °C 30 % 22 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 17
16 May after 34.3 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
17 May after 34.2 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.3 mm High 22
18 May after 33.8 °C 35 % 20 km/h 0.4 mm High 23
19 May after 34.7 °C 35 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 May after 30.6 °C 49 % 38 km/h 19.3 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 May 2022
After · 22 May 2022

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 · 15Every 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 Full Moon fire last?
It burned between 15 May 2022 and 15 May 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 444 hectares (4.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Polk (446 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, 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.