Burned area
satellite only17,393ha
Perimeter published by NIFC WFIGS.
- Source
- NIFC WFIGS
- Date
- 1 Sept 2025 – 8 Sept 2025
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
US · United States · –
Lower Sugarloaf Fire, September 2025 Chelan
Out · last detection 8 Sept 2025, 21:35 UTC
The fire started on 1 September 2025 in Chelan, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 17,393 hectares, spread across a single county.
It is the 26th largest in Washington since 2016 (of 285 with a page). Number 20 in United States in 2025, of 325.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only8days
1 Sept 2025 to 8 Sept 2025: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- NIFC WFIGS · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 8 Sept 2025, 21:35 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only1 Sept 2025
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- NIFC WFIGS · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 1 Sept 2025
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only1,156
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 246 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 1 Sept 2025 – 8 Sept 2025
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only7,060MW
Total radiative power on 3 September 2025; hotspots that day: 251.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 3 Sept 2025
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model31.9FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 15.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 1 Sept 2025, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model33.2°C · 18% RH
High of 33.2 °C and minimum humidity of 18% on 3 September 2025; gusts of 36 km/h on 1 September 2025.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 1 Sept 2025 – 8 Sept 2025
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 17,393 ha
- Dates
- 1 Sept 2025 – 8 Sept 2025
- Name
- Lower Sugarloaf
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/lower-sugarloaf-fire-2025-09?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire lower-sugarloaf-fire-2025-09.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-09-01 | 0 | 0 | 27.7 | 12.5 | 29 | 8.9 | 35.6 | 0.2 | 31.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-09-02 | 26 | 1,854 | 31.2 | 13 | 17 | 8.6 | 28.8 | 0 | 34.9 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-09-03 | 251 | 7,060 | 33.2 | 13.1 | 18 | 9.8 | 27.7 | 0 | 31.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-09-04 | 266 | 3,859 | 29.8 | 13.9 | 23 | 9.6 | 25.9 | 0 | 37.1 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-09-05 | 191 | 1,773 | 27.1 | 12.7 | 34 | 8 | 23 | 0 | 30.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-09-06 | 47 | 178 | 23.4 | 13.2 | 44 | 7 | 24.5 | 1 | 23.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2025-09-07 | 181 | 1,976 | 22.2 | 13.9 | 48 | 7.9 | 33.8 | 0.8 | 19.3 | moderado | 1 |
| 2025-09-08 | 194 | 1,320 | 24.1 | 11.4 | 34 | 8.1 | 28.1 | 0.1 | 18.3 | moderado | 1 |
| 2025-09-09 | 0 | 0 | 22.1 | 11.9 | 40 | 8.1 | 26.6 | 0.1 | 19.6 | moderado | 0 |
| 2025-09-10 | 0 | 0 | 25.6 | 10.4 | 28 | 8.3 | 25.6 | 0 | 21.8 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-09-11 | 0 | 0 | 24.3 | 11.5 | 32 | 8.6 | 29.5 | 0 | 22.3 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-09-12 | 0 | 0 | 24.9 | 12.4 | 33 | 8.9 | 31.7 | 0 | 23.1 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-09-13 | 0 | 0 | 25.2 | 9.3 | 32 | 8.9 | 27.4 | 0 | 26.1 | alto | 0 |
| 2025-09-14 | 0 | 0 | 15.3 | 10.6 | 64 | 11.4 | 38.9 | 3.3 | 5.1 | muy_bajo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: NIFC WFIGS, NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 17,393ha
- official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
- Duration
- ≈ 8days
- 1 Sept 2025 – 8 Sept 2025
- Counties hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 1 Sept
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 1,156
- in a single hotspot: 246 MW
- Danger at start
- 32
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.6GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
1 Sept8 Sept
8 Sept 2025
How it evolved, day by day
3 Sept
6 Sept
8 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
33°high
36km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity
It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.3 mm on 14 Sept.
This area had burned before
0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 19 ha in 2018, 1 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 19 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each county
-
Chelan where it started17,827 ha reached on 2 Sept2.3 %
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 2025Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Sept | 27.7 °C | 29 % | 36 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 32 |
| 2 Sept | 31.2 °C | 17 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 3 Sept | 33.2 °C | 18 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 4 Sept | 29.8 °C | 23 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 5 Sept | 27.1 °C | 34 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 6 Sept | 23.4 °C | 44 % | 24 km/h | 1.0 mm | High 24 |
| 7 Sept | 22.2 °C | 48 % | 34 km/h | 0.8 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 8 Sept | 24.1 °C | 34 % | 28 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 9 Sept after | 22.1 °C | 40 % | 27 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 10 Sept after | 25.6 °C | 28 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 11 Sept after | 24.3 °C | 32 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 12 Sept after | 24.9 °C | 33 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 13 Sept after | 25.2 °C | 32 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 14 Sept after | 15.3 °C | 64 % | 39 km/h | 3.3 mm | Very low 5 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 31.9, a minimum humidity of 29% and 15 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 17.
FWI at the start
31.9
Minimum humidity
29 %
Days without rain
15
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Lower Sugarloaf Fire, September 2025
17,393 ha
8 days
FWI 31.9
Min. humidity 29 %
Stayman Fire, July 2022
451 ha
2 days
FWI 35.8
Min. humidity 29 %
29 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Chestnut Fire, June 2026
441 ha
1 day
FWI 36.0
Min. humidity 26 %
34 km away, in 2026
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.6 mm on 8 Jun.
Okanagan-Similkameen G fire, July 2017
12,236 ha
58 days
FWI 29.5
Min. humidity 30 %
153 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.7 mm on 19 Sept.
Chikamin Fire, July 2020
787 ha
49 days
FWI 28.3
Min. humidity 24 %
40 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.0 mm on 18 Sept.
Okanagan-Similkameen H fire, July 2024
4,545 ha
25 days
FWI 24.1
Min. humidity 28 %
154 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.5 mm on 11 Aug.
What happened to them
- 13 days
- median duration
- 1,865 ha
- median area
- 59 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 4.8 mm
- rain at the end (median; 12 of 17 had it)
It was 9.3 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 8 days, against 13 days.
Only 1 of its 17 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 5 of 17, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 4.8 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
3.3 mmfirst rain
14 Sept6 days after it ended
36km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 8 Sept, and on 14 Sept 3.3 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 12 of 17, with a median of 4.8 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 25 Aug 2025
After · 15 Sept 2025
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · CopernicusOn 5 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 298 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 205: 14 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak298 µg/m³
Days over the guideline10 days
PM10304 µg/m³
Optical depth2.61
WHO 15
30 Aug2 Sept5 Sept8 Sept11 Sept
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 · 1,156Every 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
- 17,272 haCougar Creek ChelanJuly 2018 · 43 days · 15 km away
- 5,080 haRed Apple ChelanJuly 2021 · 5 days · 20 km away
- 9,464 haTwentyfive Mile ChelanAugust 2021 · 43 days · 30 km away
- 69,975 haLittle Giant ChelanJuly 2026 · 8 days · 31 km away
- 17,389 haLabor Mountain ChelanAugust 2025 · 11 days · 37 km away
- 5,553 haBatterman Rd DouglasJuly 2021 · 3 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lower Sugarloaf Fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (1 September 2025). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 8 September 2025 (8 days from 1 September 2025), 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 17,393 hectares (173.9 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
- Which counties burned?
- The fire only entered Chelan (17,827 ha, 2.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 17. Their median duration was 13 days and their median area 1,865 ha; 59 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 1 of its 17 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 5 of 17, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 4.8 mm.
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
- NIFC · National Interagency Fire Center ↗
- InciWeb · Incident Information System ↗
- MTBS · Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity ↗
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 With cross-checks and a citable version
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: NIFC WFIGS (United States), 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. 1,156 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.