How long did the Hawk fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 August 2026 to 25 August 2026 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 August 2026 to 22 August 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 6,104 hectares (61.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Washoe (6,018 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.6 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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.

US · United States · 2026-08-22 → 2026-08-25

Hawk Fire, August 2026 Washoe

Out · last detection 25 Aug 2026, 08:58 UTC

The fire started on 22 August 2026 in Washoe, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 6,104 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 49th largest in Nevada since 2016 (of 237 with a page). Number 85 in United States in 2026, of 423.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Poeville Road · 2020 Loyalton · 2020 Baccarat · 2020 Elephant · 2026

Burnt area: 6,104ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: 4days; 22 Aug 2026 – 25 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 22 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 208; in a single hotspot: 202 MW
Danger at start: 47; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.5GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Aug25 Aug

Play back 25 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

22 Aug 23 Aug 25 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

29°high

61km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 28 Aug.

This area had burned before

14% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 845 ha in 2020.

845 ha Poeville Road fire, June 2020 1,279 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (61 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 town

Washoe where it started

6,018 ha reached on 22 Aug

0.4 %

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)
22 Aug	27.9 °C	20 %	61 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 47
23 Aug	28.6 °C	18 %	48 km/h	1.2 mm	High 31
24 Aug	27.9 °C	19 %	52 km/h	2.6 mm	Moderate 19
25 Aug	27.0 °C	21 %	56 km/h	0.3 mm	High 33
26 Aug after	29.4 °C	16 %	56 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 41
27 Aug after	27.3 °C	19 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
28 Aug after	18.8 °C	38 %	35 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 15 Aug 2026

After · 1 Sept 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 24 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 598 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 284: 19 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak598 µg/m³

Days over the guideline3 days

PM10600 µg/m³

Optical depth1.48

WHO 15

202122232425262728

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 208Every 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

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Hawk fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 August 2026 to 25 August 2026 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 August 2026 to 22 August 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 6,104 hectares (61.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Washoe (6,018 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.6 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
NIFC · Fire maps ↗

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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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: NIFC WFIGS (United States), official.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 August 2026 to 22 August 2026. 208 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.

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