How long did the Gold Hill Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (11 August 2018). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 14 September 2018 (35 days from 11 August 2018), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 2,744 hectares (27.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Lincoln (2,742 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.8 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 70 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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.

US · United States · 2018-08-11 → 2018-09-14

Gold Hill Fire, August 2018 Lincoln

Out · last detection 14 Sept 2018, 20:23 UTC

The fire started on 11 August 2018 in Lincoln, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 35 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 2,744 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 88th largest in Montana since 2016 (of 302 with a page). Number 160 in United States in 2018, of 511.

Compare with…

Suggestions: West Fork · 2017 South Yaak · 2021 Sterling Complex · 2018

Burnt area: 2,744ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 35days; 11 Aug 2018 – 14 Sept 2018
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 11 Aug; 2018
Heat detections: 1,031; in a single hotspot: 214 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 358MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Aug14 Sept

Play back 14 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

12 Aug 16 Aug 20 Aug 23 Aug 24 Aug 1 Sept 5 Sept 9 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

70km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 16 Sept.

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 1.7% of the area of London (27 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 county

Lincoln where it started

2,742 ha reached on 12 Aug

0.3 %

Burnt area inside each county, 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)
11 Aug	29.8 °C	20 %	49 km/h	2.2 mm	High 22
12 Aug	18.7 °C	30 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
13 Aug	23.3 °C	21 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
14 Aug	25.6 °C	16 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
15 Aug	27.3 °C	15 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
16 Aug	28.3 °C	13 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
17 Aug	26.7 °C	25 %	44 km/h	0.7 mm	High 30
18 Aug	25.3 °C	13 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
19 Aug	21.7 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
20 Aug	17.6 °C	36 %	70 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 18
21 Aug	23.5 °C	18 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
22 Aug	25.2 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
23 Aug	22.0 °C	21 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
24 Aug	16.5 °C	34 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
25 Aug	16.6 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
26 Aug	12.8 °C	48 %	47 km/h	3.9 mm	Very low 4
27 Aug	12.2 °C	46 %	35 km/h	9.3 mm	Very low 0
28 Aug	15.8 °C	44 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 4
29 Aug	21.3 °C	27 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
30 Aug	18.2 °C	25 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
31 Aug	17.5 °C	30 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
1 Sept	17.0 °C	29 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
2 Sept	18.8 °C	27 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
3 Sept	17.6 °C	27 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
4 Sept	19.0 °C	24 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
5 Sept	22.7 °C	17 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
6 Sept	26.5 °C	14 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
7 Sept	24.8 °C	15 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 Sept	19.3 °C	26 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
9 Sept	19.0 °C	23 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
10 Sept	15.8 °C	34 %	64 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 20
11 Sept	13.0 °C	41 %	36 km/h	6.7 mm	Very low 1
12 Sept	12.3 °C	49 %	43 km/h	2.0 mm	Very low 2
13 Sept	10.1 °C	56 %	49 km/h	1.9 mm	Very low 2
14 Sept	12.3 °C	39 %	32 km/h	0.4 mm	Very low 4
15 Sept after	15.9 °C	36 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
16 Sept after	12.2 °C	48 %	49 km/h	2.0 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Aug 2018

After · 21 Sept 2018

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 · 1,031Every 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

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Frequently asked questions

How long did the Gold Hill Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (11 August 2018). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 14 September 2018 (35 days from 11 August 2018), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 2,744 hectares (27.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Lincoln (2,742 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.8 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 70 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
NIFC · Fire maps ↗

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.

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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: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), official.
The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 1,031 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 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