How long did the Kenora, Unorganized fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 August 2017 to 14 September 2017 (43 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 August 2017 to 13 September 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter mapped by Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) is 4,522 hectares (45.2 km²). Other tallies, such as those of provincial agencies, may give slightly different figures.

Which census subdivisions burned?

The fire only entered Kenora, Unorganized (4,391 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.0 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, class Moderate.

Where does this data come from?

From the official burnt perimeter of Canada’s CWFIS (NBAC, Natural Resources Canada) or, for the current season and until NBAC publishes it, the one rebuilt by GWIS (Copernicus); from NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots; and from the administrative boundaries of Canada. It is not an official report.

CA · Canada · 2017-08-03 → 2017-09-14

Kenora, Unorganized fire, 3 August 2017 Kenora, Unorganized

Out · last detection 14 Sept 2017, 07:58 UTC

The fire started on 3 August 2017 in Kenora, Unorganized, Canada, and satellites saw it burning for 43 days. Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 4,522 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single census subdivision.

It is the 101th largest in Ontario since 2016 (of 247 with a page). Number 94 in Canada in 2017, of 242.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kenora, Unorganized · 2019 Kenora, Unorganized · 2025 Kenora, Unorganized · 2019 Kenora, Unorganized · 2025

Burnt area: 4,522ha; official perimeter (CWFIS)
Duration: 43days; 3 Aug 2017 – 14 Sept 2017
Census subdivisions hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 3 Aug; 2017
Heat detections: 375; in a single hotspot: 682 MW
Danger at start: 1; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.2GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Aug14 Sept

Play back 14 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

12 Aug 25 Aug 10 Sept 11 Sept 12 Sept 14 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

28°high

66km/h · peak gust

31%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.8 mm on 16 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (45 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 census subdivision

Kenora, Unorganized where it started

4,391 ha reached on 12 Aug

0.0 %

Burnt area inside each census subdivision, 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 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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.

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)
3 Aug	21.7 °C	49 %	37 km/h	3.0 mm	Very low 1
4 Aug	21.7 °C	44 %	25 km/h	0.4 mm	Very low 3
5 Aug	22.0 °C	32 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
6 Aug	23.3 °C	45 %	35 km/h	0.7 mm	Low 8
7 Aug	24.5 °C	44 %	45 km/h	7.2 mm	Very low 1
8 Aug	21.2 °C	40 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 3
9 Aug	22.1 °C	40 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
10 Aug	22.6 °C	36 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
11 Aug	23.6 °C	42 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
12 Aug	24.8 °C	40 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
13 Aug	25.2 °C	48 %	22 km/h	4.4 mm	Very low 1
14 Aug	25.2 °C	41 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 5
15 Aug	25.2 °C	46 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
16 Aug	19.8 °C	66 %	29 km/h	6.2 mm	Very low 0
17 Aug	22.6 °C	50 %	20 km/h	0.3 mm	Very low 2
18 Aug	23.7 °C	43 %	34 km/h	0.6 mm	Very low 5
19 Aug	27.4 °C	37 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
20 Aug	21.4 °C	40 %	53 km/h	7.9 mm	Very low 2
21 Aug	16.7 °C	64 %	53 km/h	6.4 mm	Very low 0
22 Aug	15.1 °C	64 %	46 km/h	2.3 mm	Very low 0
23 Aug	16.3 °C	45 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 1
24 Aug	18.4 °C	43 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 3
25 Aug	21.9 °C	41 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
26 Aug	19.9 °C	65 %	29 km/h	1.4 mm	Very low 2
27 Aug	24.0 °C	40 %	17 km/h	4.3 mm	Very low 1
28 Aug	28.0 °C	34 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
29 Aug	24.4 °C	31 %	38 km/h	0.7 mm	Low 11
30 Aug	18.2 °C	41 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
31 Aug	21.5 °C	51 %	44 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 12
1 Sept	18.9 °C	70 %	53 km/h	21.1 mm	Very low 0
2 Sept	22.5 °C	43 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 2
3 Sept	18.0 °C	57 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 4
4 Sept	13.4 °C	58 %	66 km/h	3.6 mm	Very low 1
5 Sept	14.6 °C	43 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 2
6 Sept	14.0 °C	52 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 3
7 Sept	15.2 °C	53 %	34 km/h	0.6 mm	Very low 4
8 Sept	18.9 °C	43 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
9 Sept	21.6 °C	43 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
10 Sept	26.1 °C	50 %	54 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 11
11 Sept	21.8 °C	34 %	56 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 14
12 Sept	26.1 °C	40 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
13 Sept	16.2 °C	51 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
14 Sept	11.9 °C	65 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
15 Sept after	13.3 °C	47 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
16 Sept after	9.2 °C	63 %	50 km/h	6.8 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 Jul 2017

After · 21 Sept 2017

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.

Detections table · 375Every 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 Canada ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kenora, Unorganized fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 August 2017 to 14 September 2017 (43 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 August 2017 to 13 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter mapped by Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) is 4,522 hectares (45.2 km²). Other tallies, such as those of provincial agencies, may give slightly different figures.
Which census subdivisions burned?: The fire only entered Kenora, Unorganized (4,391 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.0 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?: From the official burnt perimeter of Canada’s CWFIS (NBAC, Natural Resources Canada) or, for the current season and until NBAC publishes it, the one rebuilt by GWIS (Copernicus); from NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots; and from the administrative boundaries of Canada. 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 ↗
CWFIS · Interactive map ↗

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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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: NBAC (Natural Resources Canada), official.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 August 2017 to 13 September 2017. 375 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 2015, 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: it comes from the National Burned Area Composite (NBAC) of the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS), Natural Resources Canada, which maps it on satellite imagery and publishes it under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Until NBAC publishes the current season, this year’s fires carry the perimeter rebuilt from heat detections by GWIS (Copernicus, CC BY 4.0), which is approximate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Census subdivision boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per census subdivision is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from official figures.

Where it burned