How long did the Lazy Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (29 September 2022). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 30 September 2022 (2 days from 29 September 2022), 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 1,761 hectares (17.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Palo Pinto (1,770 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 36 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.

US · United States · 2022-09-29 → 2022-09-30

Lazy Fire, September 2022 Palo Pinto

Out · last detection 30 Sept 2022, 09:07 UTC

The fire started on 29 September 2022 in Palo Pinto, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,761 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 103th largest in Texas since 2016 (of 327 with a page). Number 218 in United States in 2022, of 493.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Surprise · 2018 Dempsey · 2022 Ross · 2026 Jack · 2018

Burnt area: 1,761ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 2days; 29 Sept 2022 – 30 Sept 2022
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 29 Sept; 2022
Heat detections: 111; in a single hotspot: 310 MW
Danger at start: 40; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.2GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Sept30 Sept

Play back 30 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

29 Sept 30 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

32°high

36km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days 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 1.1% of the area of London (18 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

Palo Pinto where it started

1,770 ha reached on 29 Sept

0.7 %

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 area0.35 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.35 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
29 Sept	32.5 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
30 Sept	29.1 °C	27 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
1 Oct after	29.0 °C	17 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
2 Oct after	28.2 °C	19 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
3 Oct after	28.7 °C	19 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
4 Oct after	29.6 °C	21 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
5 Oct after	30.6 °C	24 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
6 Oct after	31.4 °C	23 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
7 Oct after	29.2 °C	29 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
8 Oct after	23.8 °C	39 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
9 Oct after	27.7 °C	39 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
10 Oct after	29.5 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Sept 2022

After · 7 Oct 2022

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 30 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1044 µg/m³

Optical depth0.74

WHO 15

2728293012

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 · 111Every 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 Lazy Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (29 September 2022). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 30 September 2022 (2 days from 29 September 2022), 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 1,761 hectares (17.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Palo Pinto (1,770 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 36 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 · 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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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: 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. 111 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