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Midnight Fire, June 2022 Rio Arriba

Out · last detection 11 Jun 2022, 20:06 UTC

The fire started on 10 June 2022 in Rio Arriba, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 2,140 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 74th largest in New Mexico since 2016 (of 204 with a page). Number 197 in United States in 2022, of 493.

Burnt area
2,140ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
10 Jun 2022 – 10 Jun 2022
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
10 Jun
2022
Heat detections
227
in a single hotspot: 640 MW
Danger at start
50
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
2.6GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

11 Jun 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Jun10 Jun

How it evolved, day by day

1011

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
76km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 17 Jun.

This area had burned before

33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 715 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Rio Arriba where it started
    2,137 ha reached on 10 Jun
    0.1 %

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)
10 Jun 30.1 °C 6 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
11 Jun after 30.2 °C 9 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 55
12 Jun after 28.4 °C 10 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
13 Jun after 27.1 °C 11 % 76 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
14 Jun after 24.7 °C 10 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
15 Jun after 27.8 °C 6 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
16 Jun after 29.6 °C 8 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
17 Jun after 25.6 °C 22 % 49 km/h 1.8 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Jun 2022
After · 17 Jun 2022

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 · 227Every 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 Midnight fire last?
It burned between 10 June 2022 and 10 June 2022: 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 2,140 hectares (21.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Rio Arriba (2,137 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.2 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 76 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 73, 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

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.