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Harris Fire, July 2016 Rosebud, Big Horn

Out · last detection 12 Jul 2016, 20:10 UTC

The fire started on 9 July 2016 in Rosebud, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,233 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the 159th largest in Montana since 2016 (of 302 with a page). Number 227 in United States in 2016, of 475.

Burnt area
1,233ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
4days
9 Jul 2016 – 12 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
9 Jul
2016
Heat detections
47
in a single hotspot: 63 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
252MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

12 Jul 2016
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Jul12 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

10 Jul 2016 · 384 MW · 41 12 Jul 2016 · 118 MW · 6
10 Jul 12 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
73km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 17 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. Rosebud where it started
    1,199 ha reached on 10 Jul
    0.1 %
  2. Big Horn
    8 ha
    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)
9 Jul 34.0 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 41
10 Jul 22.4 °C 43 % 40 km/h 5.9 mm Low 7
11 Jul 20.2 °C 35 % 73 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 19
12 Jul 26.2 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Jul after 26.0 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Jul after 27.3 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Jul after 29.7 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 41
16 Jul after 25.6 °C 35 % 48 km/h 0.5 mm High 36
17 Jul after 29.9 °C 24 % 36 km/h 1.4 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Jul 2016
After · 19 Jul 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 · 47Every 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 Harris fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 July 2016 to 12 July 2016 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 July 2016 to 9 July 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 1,233 hectares (12.3 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire entered 2 counties: Rosebud (1,199 ha, 0.1 %); Big Horn (8 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 73 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very 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.