How long did the Mount Pleasant Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (19 November 2016). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 27 November 2016 (9 days from 19 November 2016), 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 4,452 hectares (44.5 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Amherst (4,472 ha, 3.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 14.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 75 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.

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 · 2016-11-19 → 2016-11-27

Mount Pleasant Fire, November 2016 Amherst

Out · last detection 27 Nov 2016, 18:39 UTC

The fire started on 19 November 2016 in Amherst, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 4,452 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 2th largest in Virginia since 2016 (of 17 with a page). Number 77 in United States in 2016, of 475.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tye River · 2018 Big Levels · 2024 Eades Hollow · 2016 Matts Creek · 2023

Burnt area: 4,452ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 9days; 19 Nov 2016 – 27 Nov 2016
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 19 Nov; 2016
Heat detections: 208; in a single hotspot: 41 MW
Danger at start: 17; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 239MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Nov27 Nov

Play back 27 Nov 2016

How it evolved, day by day

20 Nov 21 Nov 22 Nov 23 Nov 24 Nov 26 Nov 27 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

15°high

75km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 25.9 mm on 29 Nov.

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 2.8% of the area of London (45 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

Amherst where it started

4,472 ha reached on 20 Nov

3.6 %

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)
19 Nov	14.6 °C	41 %	71 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 17
20 Nov	0.3 °C	39 %	75 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
21 Nov	2.7 °C	20 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
22 Nov	5.9 °C	19 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
23 Nov	5.8 °C	23 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
24 Nov	13.2 °C	46 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
25 Nov	13.4 °C	46 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
26 Nov	4.7 °C	43 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
27 Nov	5.8 °C	34 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
28 Nov after	3.8 °C	48 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
29 Nov after	12.1 °C	83 %	78 km/h	25.9 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Nov 2016

After · 4 Dec 2016

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 · 208Every 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 Mount Pleasant Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (19 November 2016). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 27 November 2016 (9 days from 19 November 2016), 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 4,452 hectares (44.5 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Amherst (4,472 ha, 3.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 14.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 75 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.
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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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What really happened?

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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.

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. 208 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