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Joy Fire, March 2026 Osage

Out · last detection 26 Mar 2026, 19:23 UTC

The fire started on 26 March 2026 in Osage, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 3,471 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 40th largest in Oklahoma since 2016 (of 284 with a page). Number 121 in United States in 2026, of 423.

Burnt area
3,471ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
26 Mar 2026 – 26 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
26 Mar
2026
Heat detections
64
in a single hotspot: 66 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
17MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Mar26 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

26

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
69km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 27 Mar.

This area had burned before

38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,310 ha in 2018, 1 ha in 2021, 1 ha in 2022, 856 ha in 2023, 1 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,311 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Osage where it started
    2,086 ha reached on 21 Mar
    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)
21 Mar 33.9 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
22 Mar 30.2 °C 21 % 69 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Mar 16.6 °C 32 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
24 Mar 22.2 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
25 Mar 31.8 °C 35 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
26 Mar 32.7 °C 34 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
27 Mar after 24.1 °C 26 % 66 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Mar 2026
After · 2 Apr 2026

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 20 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 37 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak37 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1039 µg/m³
Optical depth0.47
1920212223242526272829
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 · 64Every 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 Joy fire last?
It burned between 26 March 2026 and 26 March 2026: 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 3,471 hectares (34.7 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Osage (2,086 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 69 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class 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.