How long did the Kaiser Canyon Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (16 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 23 July 2026 (8 days from 16 July 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 55,962 hectares (559.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire entered 2 counties: Okanogan (58,520 ha, 4.2 %); Ferry (57,873 ha, 9.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 · 2026-07-16 → 2026-07-23

Kaiser Canyon Fire, July 2026 Okanogan, Ferry

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2026, 20:40 UTC

The fire started on 16 July 2026 in Okanogan, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 55,962 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

We are reviewing this page: some of its data look inconsistent (the place, the dates or the area), so treat them with caution.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Whitmore · 2021 Lower Coyote Creek · 2020 Greenhouse · 2020 Chuweah Creek Fire · 2021

Burnt area: 55,962ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 8days; 16 Jul 2026 – 23 Jul 2026
Counties hit: 2; counties
Started on: 16 Jul; 2026
Heat detections: 2,185; in a single hotspot: 519 MW
Danger at start: 44; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 5.3GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jul23 Jul

Play back 23 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

16 Jul 18 Jul 20 Jul 22 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

37°high

46km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,112 ha in 2020, 14,876 ha in 2021, 1,110 ha in 2023.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 35% of the area of London (560 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 county

Okanogan where it started

58,520 ha reached on 16 Jul

4.2 %
Ferry

57,873 ha reached on 19 Jul

9.9 %

Burnt area inside each county, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area24 ha

Residents≈ 1,400

Inside the perimeter there were about 24 hectares of built-up land and about 1,400 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
16 Jul	35.0 °C	18 %	31 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 44
17 Jul	33.1 °C	8 %	43 km/h	0.6 mm	Very high 48
18 Jul	30.2 °C	20 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
19 Jul	31.2 °C	20 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
20 Jul	30.7 °C	23 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
21 Jul	35.3 °C	15 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
22 Jul	36.8 °C	16 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
23 Jul	35.5 °C	23 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
24 Jul after	34.0 °C	17 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
25 Jul after	31.6 °C	20 %	65 km/h	0.3 mm	Extreme 57
26 Jul after	29.3 °C	21 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
27 Jul after	30.0 °C	24 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
28 Jul after	30.1 °C	21 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
29 Jul after	29.1 °C	17 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
30 Jul after	30.7 °C	15 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
31 Jul after	33.6 °C	12 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
1 Aug after	30.0 °C	19 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
2 Aug after	24.0 °C	21 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 Jul 2026

After · 30 Jul 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 25 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 371 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 208: 14 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak371 µg/m³

Days over the guideline10 days

PM10377 µg/m³

Optical depth1.98

WHO 15

14151617181920212223242526

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 · 2,185Every 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 Kaiser Canyon Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (16 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 23 July 2026 (8 days from 16 July 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 55,962 hectares (559.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire entered 2 counties: Okanogan (58,520 ha, 4.2 %); Ferry (57,873 ha, 9.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
NIFC · Fire maps ↗

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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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What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: NIFC WFIGS (United States), official.
The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 2,185 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.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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