How long did the Martin Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (5 July 2018). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 11 July 2018 (7 days from 5 July 2018), 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 174,760 hectares (1,747.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire entered 2 counties: Elko (89,155 ha, 2.0 %); Humboldt (87,073 ha, 3.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, class Very extreme.

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 · 2018-07-05 → 2018-07-11

Martin Fire, July 2018 Elko, Humboldt

Out · last detection 11 Jul 2018, 09:16 UTC

The fire started on 5 July 2018 in Elko, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 174,760 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the largest fire in Nevada since 2016 (of 237 with a page). Number 2 in United States in 2018, of 511.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Snowstorm · 2017 Chimney · 2026 Jakes · 2025 Calico · 2026

Burnt area: 174,760ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 7days; 5 Jul 2018 – 11 Jul 2018
Counties hit: 2; counties
Started on: 5 Jul; 2018
Heat detections: 3,437; in a single hotspot: 975 MW
Danger at start: 64; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 20.6GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jul11 Jul

Play back 11 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

5 Jul 6 Jul 7 Jul 8 Jul 9 Jul 10 Jul 11 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

35°high

49km/h · peak gust

6%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,170 ha in 2017.

1,170 ha Snowstorm fire, July 2017 62,702 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.1 times the area of London (1,748 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 county

Elko where it started

89,155 ha reached on 7 Jul

2.0 %
Humboldt

87,073 ha reached on 5 Jul

3.5 %

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 area0.25 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.25 hectares of 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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
5 Jul	33.6 °C	6 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
6 Jul	31.9 °C	9 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
7 Jul	33.5 °C	13 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 72
8 Jul	34.7 °C	9 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
9 Jul	34.8 °C	9 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
10 Jul	32.4 °C	10 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
11 Jul	33.3 °C	12 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
12 Jul after	33.7 °C	12 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
13 Jul after	34.0 °C	8 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
14 Jul after	35.3 °C	10 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
15 Jul after	34.7 °C	13 %	41 km/h	0.7 mm	Extreme 60
16 Jul after	32.9 °C	15 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
17 Jul after	34.3 °C	11 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
18 Jul after	36.1 °C	9 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
19 Jul after	36.2 °C	7 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
20 Jul after	34.6 °C	7 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
21 Jul after	32.8 °C	12 %	46 km/h	0.2 mm	Very extreme 75

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Jun 2018

After · 18 Jul 2018

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 · 3,437Every 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 United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Martin Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (5 July 2018). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 11 July 2018 (7 days from 5 July 2018), 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 174,760 hectares (1,747.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire entered 2 counties: Elko (89,155 ha, 2.0 %); Humboldt (87,073 ha, 3.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, class Very extreme.
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.

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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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How we know this

Perimeter: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), 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. 3,437 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