How long did the Lake Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (12 August 2020). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 30 August 2020 (19 days from 12 August 2020), 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 12,528 hectares (125.3 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Los Angeles (12,690 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.

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 · 2020-08-12 → 2020-08-30

Lake Fire, August 2020 Los Angeles

Out · last detection 30 Aug 2020, 10:15 UTC

The fire started on 12 August 2020 in Los Angeles, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 12,528 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 80th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 53 in United States in 2020, of 441.

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Burnt area: 12,528ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 19days; 12 Aug 2020 – 30 Aug 2020
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 12 Aug; 2020
Heat detections: 871; in a single hotspot: 845 MW
Danger at start: 50; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.9GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Aug30 Aug

Play back 30 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

13 Aug 14 Aug 15 Aug 17 Aug 19 Aug 21 Aug 23 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

35°high

44km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 7.9% of the area of London (125 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

Los Angeles where it started

12,690 ha reached on 13 Aug

1.2 %

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 2020

Built-up area3.2 ha

Residents≈ 80

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.2 hectares of built-up land and about 80 residents (GHSL 2020, 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)
12 Aug	31.6 °C	7 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
13 Aug	30.0 °C	14 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
14 Aug	33.8 °C	14 %	36 km/h	0.3 mm	Extreme 50
15 Aug	34.9 °C	16 %	43 km/h	1.5 mm	Very high 38
16 Aug	35.2 °C	16 %	35 km/h	1.4 mm	High 34
17 Aug	34.2 °C	22 %	34 km/h	1.6 mm	High 31
18 Aug	34.0 °C	14 %	31 km/h	0.9 mm	Very high 41
19 Aug	32.8 °C	16 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
20 Aug	33.2 °C	12 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
21 Aug	33.2 °C	14 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
22 Aug	30.4 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
23 Aug	29.4 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
24 Aug	30.0 °C	22 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
25 Aug	30.1 °C	20 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
26 Aug	30.2 °C	15 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
27 Aug	30.2 °C	12 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
28 Aug	28.6 °C	10 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
29 Aug	27.7 °C	9 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
30 Aug	27.9 °C	12 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
31 Aug after	28.0 °C	12 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
1 Sept after	29.0 °C	14 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
2 Sept after	30.0 °C	15 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
3 Sept after	31.6 °C	11 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
4 Sept after	34.2 °C	10 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
5 Sept after	35.2 °C	9 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
6 Sept after	36.4 °C	5 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
7 Sept after	32.3 °C	10 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
8 Sept after	28.1 °C	6 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
9 Sept after	22.3 °C	7 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Aug 2020

After · 6 Sept 2020

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 · 871Every 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 Lake Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (12 August 2020). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 30 August 2020 (19 days from 12 August 2020), 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 12,528 hectares (125.3 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Los Angeles (12,690 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
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.

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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: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), 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. 871 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 2020, 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