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Mitchell Fire, April 2022 Harding

Out · last detection 23 Apr 2022, 20:25 UTC

The fire started on 22 April 2022 in Harding, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 9,398 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 21th largest in New Mexico since 2016 (of 204 with a page). Number 61 in United States in 2022, of 493.

Burnt area
9,398ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
22 Apr 2022 – 22 Apr 2022
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
22 Apr
2022
Heat detections
192
in a single hotspot: 131 MW
Danger at start
114
Very extreme · FWI index
Energy released
3.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

23 Apr 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Apr22 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

2223

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
95km/h · peak gust
4%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Harding where it started
    9,418 ha reached on 22 Apr
    1.7 %

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)
22 Apr 31.9 °C 4 % 95 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 114
23 Apr after 22.1 °C 8 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
24 Apr after 18.3 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Apr after 16.2 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 38
26 Apr after 22.3 °C 13 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
27 Apr after 27.7 °C 26 % 60 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 53
28 Apr after 29.1 °C 5 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
29 Apr after 28.4 °C 3 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
30 Apr after 23.5 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
1 May after 27.3 °C 22 % 63 km/h 0.8 mm Extreme 59
2 May after 25.9 °C 11 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
3 May after 23.2 °C 20 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
4 May after 23.8 °C 8 % 69 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
5 May after 26.1 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 50
6 May after 33.0 °C 2 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Apr 2022
After · 29 Apr 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 · 192Every 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 Mitchell fire last?
It burned between 22 April 2022 and 22 April 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 9,398 hectares (94.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Harding (9,418 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.9 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 95 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 114, 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.