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Mccash Fire, August 2021 Siskiyou

Out · last detection 2 Aug 2021, 21:18 UTC

The fire started on 1 August 2021 in Siskiyou, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 38,728 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 28th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 18 in United States in 2021, of 385.

Burnt area
38,728ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
1 Aug 2021 – 1 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
1 Aug
2021
Heat detections
11,385
in a single hotspot: 452 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

2 Aug 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Aug1 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

12

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
51km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 13 Aug.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 668 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Siskiyou where it started
    38,813 ha reached on 1 Aug
    2.4 %

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)
1 Aug 26.7 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
2 Aug after 28.4 °C 13 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
3 Aug after 28.7 °C 9 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Aug after 29.1 °C 9 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Aug after 21.0 °C 24 % 51 km/h 0.4 mm High 36
6 Aug after 24.8 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Aug after 26.9 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Aug after 25.2 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Aug after 28.0 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
10 Aug after 30.2 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Aug after 31.2 °C 14 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
12 Aug after 32.1 °C 12 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 44
13 Aug after 30.9 °C 19 % 31 km/h 2.1 mm High 22

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Jul 2021
After · 8 Aug 2021

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 · 11,385Every 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

Other fires nearby

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mccash fire last?
It burned between 1 August 2021 and 1 August 2021: 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 38,728 hectares (387.3 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Siskiyou (38,813 ha, 2.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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

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.

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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.

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.