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Little Bear Fire, July 2019 Garfield

Out · last detection 2 Sept 2019, 08:40 UTC

The fire started on 26 July 2019 in Garfield, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 39 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,078 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 99th largest in Utah since 2016 (of 165 with a page). Number 198 in United States in 2019, of 367.

Compare with…

Suggestions: France Canyon · 2025Left Fork · 2022Riggs · 2018Brianhead · 2017

Burnt area
1,078ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
≈ 39days
26 Jul 2019 – 2 Sept 2019
Counties hit
1
counties
Started on
26 Jul
2019
Heat detections
328
in a single hotspot: 121 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
152MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Jul2 Sept
2 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

14 Aug 2019 · 6 MW · 1 15 Aug 2019 · 16 MW · 4 16 Aug 2019 · 60 MW · 5 17 Aug 2019 · 366 MW · 43 18 Aug 2019 · 292 MW · 51 19 Aug 2019 · 61 MW · 12 20 Aug 2019 · 988 MW · 34 21 Aug 2019 · 165 MW · 30 22 Aug 2019 · 7 MW · 9 23 Aug 2019 · 150 MW · 19 24 Aug 2019 · 39 MW · 12 25 Aug 2019 · 68 MW · 18 26 Aug 2019 · 158 MW · 17 27 Aug 2019 · 76 MW · 15 28 Aug 2019 · 2 MW · 1 29 Aug 2019 · 2 MW · 2 30 Aug 2019 · 455 MW · 28 31 Aug 2019 · 89 MW · 13 1 Sept 2019 · 48 MW · 13 2 Sept 2019 · 1 MW · 1
14 Aug 17 Aug 20 Aug 23 Aug 26 Aug 29 Aug 1 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

29°high
59km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 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

  1. Garfield where it started
    1,077 ha reached on 14 Aug
    0.1 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
26 Jul 22.3 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
27 Jul 24.0 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
28 Jul 26.6 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Jul 27.3 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
30 Jul 25.3 °C 14 % 48 km/h 0.7 mm Very high 41
31 Jul 17.1 °C 47 % 32 km/h 1.4 mm Low 10
1 Aug 24.0 °C 24 % 28 km/h 2.0 mm Low 9
2 Aug 25.7 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
3 Aug 25.4 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.3 mm High 29
4 Aug 25.2 °C 24 % 30 km/h 1.7 mm Moderate 14
5 Aug 26.4 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Aug 27.2 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.6 mm High 34
7 Aug 21.7 °C 31 % 32 km/h 3.0 mm Low 7
8 Aug 23.8 °C 21 % 42 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 18
9 Aug 23.1 °C 19 % 53 km/h 0.5 mm High 33
10 Aug 23.5 °C 18 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Aug 23.9 °C 14 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Aug 25.8 °C 10 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Aug 26.9 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Aug 28.4 °C 6 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Aug 28.8 °C 8 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Aug 27.8 °C 6 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
17 Aug 26.7 °C 6 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
18 Aug 26.0 °C 8 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
19 Aug 25.6 °C 8 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
20 Aug 27.6 °C 8 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
21 Aug 28.4 °C 6 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
22 Aug 25.5 °C 5 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
23 Aug 26.1 °C 11 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
24 Aug 27.4 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
25 Aug 29.1 °C 11 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
26 Aug 29.4 °C 8 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
27 Aug 28.6 °C 9 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Aug 27.2 °C 9 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Aug 26.0 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 46
30 Aug 27.8 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Aug 29.0 °C 6 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
1 Sept 28.7 °C 8 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
2 Sept 25.8 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
3 Sept after 25.0 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 42
4 Sept after 26.3 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Sept after 26.0 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Sept after 25.4 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 49
7 Sept after 25.5 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Sept after 21.1 °C 9 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
9 Sept after 21.6 °C 9 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Sept after 19.8 °C 13 % 72 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
11 Sept after 18.3 °C 13 % 54 km/h 0.9 mm Very high 40
12 Sept after 19.2 °C 9 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Jul 2019
After · 9 Sept 2019

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 · 328Every 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 Little Bear Fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (26 July 2019). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 2 September 2019 (39 days from 26 July 2019), 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 1,078 hectares (10.8 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Garfield (1,077 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, 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

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.

Report an error
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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. 328 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.