How long did the Mcfarland Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (30 July 2021). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 27 August 2021 (29 days from 30 July 2021), 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 49,160 hectares (491.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire entered 3 counties: Tehama (35,388 ha, 4.6 %); Trinity (7,153 ha, 0.9 %); Shasta (6,687 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class 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 · 2021-07-30 → 2021-08-27

Mcfarland Fire, July 2021 Tehama, Trinity, Shasta

Out · last detection 27 Aug 2021, 10:27 UTC

The fire started on 30 July 2021 in Tehama, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 49,160 hectares, spread across 3 counties.

It is the 22th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 11 in United States in 2021, of 385.

Compare with…

Suggestions: August Complex · 2020 Red Bank · 2019 Buck · 2017 South · 2019

Burnt area: 49,160ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 29days; 30 Jul 2021 – 27 Aug 2021
Counties hit: 3; counties
Started on: 30 Jul; 2021
Heat detections: 5,207; in a single hotspot: 783 MW
Danger at start: 15; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 3.5GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jul27 Aug

Play back 27 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jul 4 Aug 9 Aug 14 Aug 16 Aug 19 Aug 24 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

54km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2017, 394 ha in 2019, 502 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 31% of the area of London (492 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

Tehama where it started

35,388 ha reached on 5 Aug

4.6 %
Trinity

7,153 ha reached on 30 Jul

0.9 %
Shasta

6,687 ha reached on 30 Jul

0.7 %

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 area4.4 ha

Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.4 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (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)
30 Jul	30.6 °C	25 %	41 km/h	2.3 mm	Moderate 15
31 Jul	31.1 °C	19 %	33 km/h	1.1 mm	High 24
1 Aug	30.6 °C	22 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
2 Aug	30.2 °C	18 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
3 Aug	31.5 °C	15 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
4 Aug	31.0 °C	17 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
5 Aug	26.8 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
6 Aug	30.4 °C	15 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
7 Aug	30.6 °C	21 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
8 Aug	31.2 °C	21 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	High 36
9 Aug	31.0 °C	19 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
10 Aug	33.3 °C	16 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
11 Aug	34.2 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
12 Aug	33.3 °C	20 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 42
13 Aug	31.3 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
14 Aug	33.5 °C	22 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
15 Aug	36.1 °C	16 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
16 Aug	32.1 °C	18 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
17 Aug	27.6 °C	17 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
18 Aug	24.9 °C	19 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
19 Aug	28.5 °C	20 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
20 Aug	28.2 °C	26 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
21 Aug	25.3 °C	22 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Aug	26.8 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
23 Aug	26.6 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
24 Aug	25.6 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
25 Aug	26.9 °C	15 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
26 Aug	29.4 °C	14 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
27 Aug	32.0 °C	8 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
28 Aug after	32.8 °C	11 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
29 Aug after	32.5 °C	14 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
30 Aug after	32.2 °C	10 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
31 Aug after	29.8 °C	12 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
1 Sept after	26.0 °C	18 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
2 Sept after	25.2 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
3 Sept after	27.1 °C	17 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
4 Sept after	29.1 °C	11 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
5 Sept after	31.1 °C	8 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
6 Sept after	32.4 °C	7 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Jul 2021

After · 3 Sept 2021

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 · 5,207Every 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 Mcfarland Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (30 July 2021). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 27 August 2021 (29 days from 30 July 2021), 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 49,160 hectares (491.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire entered 3 counties: Tehama (35,388 ha, 4.6 %); Trinity (7,153 ha, 0.9 %); Shasta (6,687 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class 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. 5,207 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