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Lost Fire, March 2017 Pittsburg

Out · last detection 22 Mar 2017, 08:02 UTC

The fire started on 21 March 2017 in Pittsburg, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,690 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 80th largest in Oklahoma since 2016 (of 284 with a page). Number 285 in United States in 2017, of 619.

Burnt area
1,690ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
21 Mar 2017 – 21 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
21 Mar
2017
Heat detections
115
in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index
Energy released
513MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

22 Mar 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Mar21 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

2122

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
70km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 17.8 mm on 26 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. Pittsburg where it started
    1,688 ha reached on 14 Mar
    0.5 %

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)
14 Mar 11.6 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
15 Mar 14.5 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
16 Mar 18.0 °C 65 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
17 Mar 23.8 °C 65 % 49 km/h 0.2 mm Very low 5
18 Mar 28.2 °C 43 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
19 Mar 28.9 °C 44 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
20 Mar 31.1 °C 38 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
21 Mar 28.9 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
22 Mar after 22.1 °C 53 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
23 Mar after 27.9 °C 33 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
24 Mar after 22.9 °C 35 % 70 km/h 4.3 mm Very low 4
25 Mar after 16.7 °C 49 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
26 Mar after 25.4 °C 41 % 46 km/h 17.8 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Mar 2017
After · 28 Mar 2017

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 · 115Every 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 Lost Fire fire last?
It burned between 21 March 2017 and 21 March 2017: 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 1,690 hectares (16.9 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Pittsburg (1,688 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.1 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 70 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.
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.