How long did the Mineral Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (13 July 2020). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 20 July 2020 (8 days from 13 July 2020), 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 12,104 hectares (121.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire entered 2 counties: Fresno (11,106 ha, 0.7 %); Monterey (922 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 2020-07-13 → 2020-07-20

Mineral Fire, July 2020 Fresno, Monterey

Out · last detection 20 Jul 2020, 21:03 UTC

The fire started on 13 July 2020 in Fresno, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 12,104 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the 84th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 56 in United States in 2020, of 441.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mineral · 2016 Curry · 2016 Boone · 2024 Elm 2 · 2017

Burnt area: 12,104ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 8days; 13 Jul 2020 – 20 Jul 2020
Counties hit: 2; counties
Started on: 13 Jul; 2020
Heat detections: 619; in a single hotspot: 462 MW
Danger at start: 49; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.1GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Jul20 Jul

Play back 20 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

14 Jul 15 Jul 16 Jul 17 Jul 18 Jul 19 Jul 20 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

32°high

36km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 54 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

22% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,624 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.6% of the area of London (121 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

Fresno where it started

11,106 ha reached on 14 Jul

0.7 %
Monterey

922 ha reached on 19 Jul

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 area1.3 ha

Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.3 hectares of built-up land and about 30 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	Danger (FWI)
13 Jul	31.9 °C	16 %	34 km/h	Very high 49
14 Jul	29.1 °C	21 %	31 km/h	Very high 40
15 Jul	29.3 °C	23 %	34 km/h	Very high 38
16 Jul	30.5 °C	23 %	35 km/h	High 38
17 Jul	30.7 °C	24 %	34 km/h	High 37
18 Jul	31.5 °C	21 %	34 km/h	High 38
19 Jul	31.3 °C	19 %	36 km/h	High 38
20 Jul	31.6 °C	20 %	32 km/h	High 37
21 Jul after	30.5 °C	15 %	34 km/h	High 37
22 Jul after	27.8 °C	20 %	36 km/h	Very high 44
23 Jul after	28.1 °C	23 %	32 km/h	High 37
24 Jul after	30.2 °C	20 %	32 km/h	High 38
25 Jul after	30.5 °C	22 %	37 km/h	High 37
26 Jul after	31.2 °C	21 %	37 km/h	Very high 41
27 Jul after	31.8 °C	21 %	37 km/h	Very high 38
28 Jul after	32.7 °C	18 %	33 km/h	Very high 39
29 Jul after	32.5 °C	17 %	35 km/h	High 38
30 Jul after	32.2 °C	20 %	33 km/h	High 37

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Jul 2020

After · 27 Jul 2020

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 · 619Every 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 Mineral Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (13 July 2020). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 20 July 2020 (8 days from 13 July 2020), 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 12,104 hectares (121.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire entered 2 counties: Fresno (11,106 ha, 0.7 %); Monterey (922 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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.

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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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What really happened?

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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. 619 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