Jackson Fire, March 2024 Osage
The fire started on 17 March 2024 in Osage, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 905 hectares, spread across a single county.
It is the 156th largest in Oklahoma since 2016 (of 284 with a page). Number 235 in United States in 2024, of 371.
The power measured by the satellite is low (21.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 905ha
- official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
- Duration
- 12days
- 17 Mar 2024 – 28 Mar 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 17 Mar
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 37
- in a single hotspot: 21 MW
- Danger at start
- 10
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 97MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 28.3 mm on 1 Apr.
This area had burned before
2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 16 ha in 2022.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Osage where it started896 ha reached on 18 Mar0.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Mar | 16.0 °C | 27 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 18 Mar | 9.1 °C | 22 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 19 Mar | 23.2 °C | 27 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 20 Mar | 23.4 °C | 37 % | 34 km/h | 1.4 mm | Low 6 |
| 21 Mar | 18.5 °C | 54 % | 26 km/h | 7.7 mm | Very low 0 |
| 22 Mar | 18.5 °C | 56 % | 53 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very low 2 |
| 23 Mar | 13.9 °C | 46 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 24 Mar | 15.4 °C | 55 % | 72 km/h | 6.8 mm | Very low 0 |
| 25 Mar | 16.1 °C | 55 % | 60 km/h | 0.5 mm | Very low 2 |
| 26 Mar | 9.1 °C | 43 % | 57 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 27 Mar | 11.4 °C | 35 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 28 Mar | 20.2 °C | 31 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 29 Mar after | 22.8 °C | 49 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 30 Mar after | 23.1 °C | 55 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 8 |
| 31 Mar after | 25.0 °C | 66 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 1 Apr after | 22.3 °C | 80 % | 47 km/h | 28.3 mm | Very low 0 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 22 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 41 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 37Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,706 haNorth Drum OsageMarch 2023 · 6 days · 10 km away
- 9,394 haCandy Creek OsageMarch 2021 · 23 days · 12 km away
- 12,315 haDrumb OsageMarch 2018 · 22 days · 13 km away
- 6,067 haHwy 123 OsageMarch 2023 · 10 days · 19 km away
- 5,062 haZink OsageMarch 2024 · 17 days · 23 km away
- 4,591 haZink OsageMarch 2023 · 7 days · 25 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Jackson fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 March 2024 to 28 March 2024 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 March 2024 to 19 March 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 905 hectares (9.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
- Which counties burned?
- The fire only entered Osage (896 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 23.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 72 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 13, 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
- NIFC · National Interagency Fire Center ↗
- InciWeb · Incident Information System ↗
- MTBS · Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity ↗
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.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), official.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 19 March 2024 to 19 March 2024. 37 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.
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.