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Hard Luck Fire, July 2022 Southeast Fairbanks

Out · last detection 2 Jul 2022, 18:43 UTC

The fire started on 2 July 2022 in Southeast Fairbanks, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,065 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 331th largest in Alaska since 2016 (of 472 with a page). Number 294 in United States in 2022, of 493.

Burnt area
1,065ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
2 Jul 2022 – 2 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
2 Jul
2022
Heat detections
73
in a single hotspot: 48 MW
Danger at start
5
Low · FWI index
Energy released
14MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jul2 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

2

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

The weather it burned in

27°high
34km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.1 mm on 10 Jul.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Southeast Fairbanks where it started
    1,111 ha reached on 2 Jul
    0.0 %

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)
2 Jul 26.4 °C 38 % 26 km/h 2.3 mm Low 5
3 Jul after 24.5 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 12
4 Jul after 27.0 °C 36 % 23 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 14
5 Jul after 27.4 °C 30 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
6 Jul after 25.2 °C 41 % 26 km/h 1.8 mm Low 7
7 Jul after 26.4 °C 40 % 34 km/h 2.0 mm Low 7
8 Jul after 23.4 °C 50 % 26 km/h 3.2 mm Very low 3
9 Jul after 20.2 °C 68 % 23 km/h 12.6 mm Very low 0
10 Jul after 20.2 °C 65 % 24 km/h 5.1 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Jun 2022
After · 9 Jul 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 · 73Every 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 Hard Luck fire last?
It burned between 2 July 2022 and 2 July 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 1,065 hectares (10.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Southeast Fairbanks (1,111 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.4 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, 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.