How long did the Mackenzie County fire last?

It burned between 30 June 2016 and 18 July 2016: 19 days, according to the dates recorded by Canada’s CWFIS and the heat detections seen by satellite.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter mapped by Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) is 2,231 hectares (22.3 km²). Other tallies, such as those of provincial agencies, may give slightly different figures.

Which census subdivisions burned?

The fire only entered Mackenzie County (2,303 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 27.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, class Moderate.

Where does this data come from?

From the official burnt perimeter of Canada’s CWFIS (NBAC, Natural Resources Canada) or, for the current season and until NBAC publishes it, the one rebuilt by GWIS (Copernicus); from NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots; and from the administrative boundaries of Canada. It is not an official report.

CA · Canada · 2016-06-30 → 2016-07-18

Mackenzie County fire, June 2016 Mackenzie County

Out · last detection 18 Jul 2016, 20:02 UTC

The fire started on 30 June 2016 in Mackenzie County, Canada, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 2,231 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single census subdivision.

It is the 159th largest in Alberta since 2016 (of 243 with a page). Number 54 in Canada in 2016, of 88.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mackenzie County · 2017 Mackenzie County · 2022 Mackenzie County · 2024 Region 4, Unorganized · 2019

Burnt area: 2,231ha; official perimeter (CWFIS)
Duration: 19days; 30 Jun 2016 – 18 Jul 2016
Census subdivisions hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 30 Jun; 2016
Heat detections: 100; in a single hotspot: 66 MW
Danger at start: 12; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 194MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jun18 Jul

Play back 18 Jul 2016

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jun 2 Jul 18 Jul

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

54km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.8 mm on 19 Jul.

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 1.4% of the area of London (22 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 census subdivision

Mackenzie County where it started

2,303 ha reached on 30 Jun

0.0 %

Burnt area inside each census subdivision, 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 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
30 Jun	27.9 °C	37 %	41 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 12
1 Jul	22.2 °C	64 %	54 km/h	8.8 mm	Very low 0
2 Jul	23.1 °C	45 %	43 km/h	0.2 mm	Very low 4
3 Jul	23.1 °C	35 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
4 Jul	21.5 °C	64 %	44 km/h	10.8 mm	Very low 0
5 Jul	23.6 °C	46 %	38 km/h	2.5 mm	Very low 1
6 Jul	20.6 °C	39 %	31 km/h	5.9 mm	Very low 1
7 Jul	16.4 °C	50 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 1
8 Jul	15.8 °C	66 %	26 km/h	1.2 mm	Very low 1
9 Jul	20.1 °C	52 %	23 km/h	0.6 mm	Very low 2
10 Jul	21.6 °C	43 %	24 km/h	1.5 mm	Very low 2
11 Jul	20.1 °C	51 %	29 km/h	1.2 mm	Very low 3
12 Jul	19.3 °C	54 %	43 km/h	0.9 mm	Very low 4
13 Jul	21.0 °C	48 %	32 km/h	1.7 mm	Very low 2
14 Jul	26.3 °C	25 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
15 Jul	25.7 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 13
16 Jul	21.2 °C	48 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
17 Jul	26.3 °C	34 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
18 Jul	25.3 °C	41 %	29 km/h	1.6 mm	Low 8
19 Jul after	19.0 °C	77 %	34 km/h	2.8 mm	Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Jun 2016

After · 25 Jul 2016

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.

Detections table · 100Every 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 Canada ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mackenzie County fire last?: It burned between 30 June 2016 and 18 July 2016: 19 days, according to the dates recorded by Canada’s CWFIS and the heat detections seen by satellite.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter mapped by Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) is 2,231 hectares (22.3 km²). Other tallies, such as those of provincial agencies, may give slightly different figures.
Which census subdivisions burned?: The fire only entered Mackenzie County (2,303 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 27.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?: From the official burnt perimeter of Canada’s CWFIS (NBAC, Natural Resources Canada) or, for the current season and until NBAC publishes it, the one rebuilt by GWIS (Copernicus); from NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots; and from the administrative boundaries of Canada. 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 ↗
CWFIS · Interactive map ↗

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

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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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How we know this

Perimeter: NBAC (Natural Resources Canada), official.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 100 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 2015, 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: it comes from the National Burned Area Composite (NBAC) of the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS), Natural Resources Canada, which maps it on satellite imagery and publishes it under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Until NBAC publishes the current season, this year’s fires carry the perimeter rebuilt from heat detections by GWIS (Copernicus, CC BY 4.0), which is approximate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Census subdivision boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per census subdivision is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from official figures.

Where it burned