How long did the Mariposa fire last?

It burned between 1 September 2019 and 1 September 2019: 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 445 hectares (4.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Mariposa (445 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, class Very 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.

US · United States · 2019-09-01 → 2019-09-01

Mariposa fire, September 2019 Mariposa

Out · last measured on 1 Sept 2019

The fire started on 1 September 2019 in Mariposa, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 445 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 418th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 351 in United States in 2019, of 367.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Detwiler · 2017 Briceburg · 2019 Planada · 2018 Oak · 2022

We have the official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC) for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by county is there.

Burnt area: 445ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: 1day; 1 Sept 2019 – 1 Sept 2019
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 1 Sept; 2019
Danger at start: 45; Very high · FWI index

The weather it burned in

34°high

31km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 415 ha in 2017.

415 ha Detwiler fire, July 2017 33,741 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each county

Mariposa where it started

445 ha

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	Danger (FWI)
1 Sept	33.7 °C	14 %	31 km/h	Very high 45
2 Sept after	33.7 °C	17 %	27 km/h	Very high 49
3 Sept after	32.1 °C	18 %	33 km/h	Extreme 50
4 Sept after	33.1 °C	15 %	33 km/h	Very high 46
5 Sept after	33.0 °C	19 %	30 km/h	Very high 46
6 Sept after	31.3 °C	19 %	31 km/h	Very high 47
7 Sept after	26.2 °C	24 %	41 km/h	Very high 48
8 Sept after	24.3 °C	30 %	34 km/h	High 37
9 Sept after	24.7 °C	26 %	35 km/h	High 37
10 Sept after	23.3 °C	19 %	28 km/h	High 36
11 Sept after	25.9 °C	23 %	33 km/h	High 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Aug 2019

After · 8 Sept 2019

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.

Other fires nearby

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mariposa fire last?: It burned between 1 September 2019 and 1 September 2019: 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 445 hectares (4.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Mariposa (445 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, class Very 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
NIFC · Fire maps ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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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.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.

Where it burned