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Gap Fire, February 2016 Latimer

Out · last detection 17 Feb 2016, 07:45 UTC

The fire started on 16 February 2016 in Latimer, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 443 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 273th largest in Oklahoma since 2016 (of 284 with a page). Number 456 in United States in 2016, of 475.

The power measured by the satellite is low (9.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
443ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
16 Feb 2016 – 16 Feb 2016
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
16 Feb
2016
Heat detections
38
in a single hotspot: 10 MW
Danger at start
15
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
39MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

17 Feb 2016
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Feb16 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

1617

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

The weather it burned in

17°high
55km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 41.2 mm on 23 Feb.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Latimer where it started
    445 ha reached on 15 Feb
    0.2 %

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)
16 Feb 16.7 °C 27 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
17 Feb after 20.6 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
18 Feb after 24.7 °C 16 % 67 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
19 Feb after 24.3 °C 37 % 67 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
20 Feb after 23.0 °C 55 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
21 Feb after 21.6 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 12
22 Feb after 17.5 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
23 Feb after 11.0 °C 58 % 56 km/h 41.2 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Feb 2016
After · 23 Feb 2016

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 · 38Every 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 Gap Fire fire last?
It burned between 16 February 2016 and 16 February 2016: 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 443 hectares (4.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Latimer (445 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 16.7 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, class Moderate.
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.