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King Fire, March 2021 Brooks

Out · last detection 19 Mar 2021, 20:22 UTC

The fire started on 18 March 2021 in Brooks, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 3,959 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 45th largest in Texas since 2016 (of 327 with a page). Number 105 in United States in 2021, of 385.

Burnt area
3,959ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
18 Mar 2021 – 18 Mar 2021
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
18 Mar
2021
Heat detections
75
in a single hotspot: 120 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

19 Mar 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Mar18 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

1819

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

The weather it burned in

27°high
40km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.5 mm on 28 Mar.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Brooks where it started
    3,958 ha reached on 18 Mar
    1.6 %

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)
18 Mar 27.3 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Mar after 25.1 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Mar after 25.4 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Mar after 27.2 °C 35 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Mar after 28.4 °C 45 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Mar after 32.4 °C 25 % 53 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
24 Mar after 33.6 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Mar after 31.5 °C 13 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
26 Mar after 30.3 °C 45 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Mar after 37.1 °C 33 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Mar after 26.1 °C 45 % 64 km/h 6.5 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Mar 2021
After · 25 Mar 2021

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 · 75Every 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 King fire last?
It burned between 18 March 2021 and 18 March 2021: 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 3,959 hectares (39.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Brooks (3,958 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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

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.