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Lowery Fire, April 2023 Garfield

Out · last detection 11 Apr 2023, 20:10 UTC

The fire started on 11 April 2023 in Garfield, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,974 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 23th largest in Nebraska since 2016 (of 40 with a page). Number 87 in United States in 2023, of 305.

Burnt area
1,974ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
11 Apr 2023 – 11 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
11 Apr
2023
Heat detections
75
in a single hotspot: 67 MW
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
1.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Apr11 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

11

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

The weather it burned in

28°high
58km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 19 Apr.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Garfield where it started
    1,980 ha reached on 10 Apr
    1.3 %

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)
10 Apr 23.2 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
11 Apr 28.5 °C 18 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
12 Apr after 28.7 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Apr after 29.1 °C 24 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Apr after 21.1 °C 39 % 56 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
15 Apr after 7.5 °C 48 % 64 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 20
16 Apr after 13.6 °C 19 % 71 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Apr after 19.4 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
18 Apr after 22.3 °C 29 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Apr after 16.8 °C 30 % 47 km/h 2.1 mm Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Apr 2023
After · 18 Apr 2023

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 9 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1031 µg/m³
Optical depth0.59
91011121314
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 · 75Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lowery fire last?
It burned between 11 April 2023 and 11 April 2023: 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 1,974 hectares (19.7 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Garfield (1,980 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.5 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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.