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US · United States ·

Greenville Fire, August 2020 Beaver

Out · last measured on 22 Aug 2020

The fire started on 22 August 2020 in Beaver, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 464 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 164th largest in Utah since 2016 (of 165 with a page). Number 411 in United States in 2020, of 441.

Compare with…

We have the official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC) for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by county is there.

Burnt area
464ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
22 Aug 2020 – 22 Aug 2020
Counties hit
1
counties
Started on
22 Aug
2020
Danger at start
63
Extreme · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

36°high
40km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each county

  1. Beaver where it started
    463 ha
    0.1 %

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 area0.37 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.37 hectares of 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)
22 Aug 35.6 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
23 Aug after 34.7 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
24 Aug after 34.7 °C 14 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 Aug after 33.5 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
26 Aug after 34.5 °C 12 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
27 Aug after 34.4 °C 11 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
28 Aug after 32.5 °C 12 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
29 Aug after 30.9 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 58
30 Aug after 30.8 °C 10 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
31 Aug after 30.8 °C 12 % 71 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
1 Sept after 26.6 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Aug 2020
After · 29 Aug 2020

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in United States

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Greenville Fire last?
It burned between 22 August 2020 and 22 August 2020: 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 464 hectares (4.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Beaver (463 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, class 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 · 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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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.