How long did the Moore Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (1 May 2020). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 4 May 2020 (4 days from 1 May 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 2,707 hectares (27.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Mora (2,702 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 55 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.

US · United States · 2020-05-01 → 2020-05-04

Moore Fire, May 2020 Mora

Out · last detection 4 May 2020, 08:46 UTC

The fire started on 1 May 2020 in Mora, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 2,707 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 59th largest in New Mexico since 2016 (of 204 with a page). Number 152 in United States in 2020, of 441.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Blanco · 2018 Mogote · 2023 Mogote Hill · 2025 San Miguel · 2026

Burnt area: 2,707ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 4days; 1 May 2020 – 4 May 2020
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 1 May; 2020
Heat detections: 69; in a single hotspot: 160 MW
Danger at start: 46; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 666MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 May4 May

Play back 4 May 2020

How it evolved, day by day

2 May 3 May 4 May

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

55km/h · peak gust

4%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.7 mm on 11 May.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (27 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

Mora where it started

2,702 ha reached on 2 May

0.5 %

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.

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 May	30.7 °C	11 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 46
2 May	31.0 °C	5 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
3 May	31.8 °C	4 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 73
4 May	29.2 °C	8 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
5 May after	23.2 °C	19 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
6 May after	25.7 °C	16 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
7 May after	30.6 °C	3 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 83
8 May after	15.9 °C	25 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
9 May after	22.4 °C	18 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
10 May after	21.2 °C	31 %	52 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 44
11 May after	21.5 °C	27 %	60 km/h	3.7 mm	Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Apr 2020

After · 11 May 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 · 69Every 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 Moore Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (1 May 2020). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 4 May 2020 (4 days from 1 May 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 2,707 hectares (27.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Mora (2,702 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 55 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 · 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. 69 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.

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