How long did the Mount Waddington D fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 August 2018 to 28 August 2018 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 August 2018 to 24 August 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter mapped by Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) is 1,195 hectares (12.0 km²). Other tallies, such as those of provincial agencies, may give slightly different figures.

Which census subdivisions burned?

The fire entered 2 census subdivisions: Strathcona A (905 ha, 0.1 %); Mount Waddington D (291 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 22.9 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, class Moderate.

Where does this data come from?

From the official burnt perimeter of Canada’s CWFIS (NBAC, Natural Resources Canada) or, for the current season and until NBAC publishes it, the one rebuilt by GWIS (Copernicus); from NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots; and from the administrative boundaries of Canada. It is not an official report.

CA · Canada · 2018-08-10 → 2018-08-28

Mount Waddington D fire, August 2018 Strathcona A, Mount Waddington D

Out · last detection 28 Aug 2018, 10:55 UTC

The fire started on 10 August 2018 in Mount Waddington D, Canada, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,195 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 census subdivisions.

It is the 402th largest in British Columbia since 2016 (of 448 with a page). Number 193 in Canada in 2018, of 212.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 1,195ha; official perimeter (CWFIS)
Duration: 19days; 10 Aug 2018 – 28 Aug 2018
Census subdivisions hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 10 Aug; 2018
Heat detections: 545; in a single hotspot: 148 MW
Danger at start: 4; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 342MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Aug28 Aug

Play back 28 Aug 2018

How it evolved, day by day

11 Aug 14 Aug 17 Aug 20 Aug 22 Aug 23 Aug 28 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

23°high

54km/h · peak gust

27%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.7 mm on 29 Aug.

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 0.8% of the area of London (12 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 census subdivision

Strathcona A

905 ha reached on 13 Aug

0.1 %
Mount Waddington D where it started

291 ha reached on 11 Aug

0.1 %

Burnt area inside each census subdivision, 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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
10 Aug	20.6 °C	35 %	31 km/h	2.1 mm	Very low 4
11 Aug	10.6 °C	78 %	25 km/h	6.2 mm	Very low 0
12 Aug	15.0 °C	57 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 0
13 Aug	17.9 °C	48 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 2
14 Aug	19.4 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
15 Aug	17.7 °C	50 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
16 Aug	15.1 °C	38 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
17 Aug	15.4 °C	44 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
18 Aug	16.3 °C	42 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
19 Aug	17.1 °C	41 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
20 Aug	22.9 °C	34 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
21 Aug	22.7 °C	27 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
22 Aug	16.5 °C	45 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
23 Aug	12.3 °C	49 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
24 Aug	13.0 °C	48 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
25 Aug	10.8 °C	72 %	38 km/h	1.4 mm	Very low 4
26 Aug	11.4 °C	67 %	48 km/h	0.9 mm	Very low 4
27 Aug	16.2 °C	36 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
28 Aug	14.9 °C	56 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
29 Aug after	10.1 °C	76 %	27 km/h	5.7 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Aug 2018

After · 4 Sept 2018

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 · 545Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mount Waddington D fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 August 2018 to 28 August 2018 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 August 2018 to 24 August 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter mapped by Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) is 1,195 hectares (12.0 km²). Other tallies, such as those of provincial agencies, may give slightly different figures.
Which census subdivisions burned?: The fire entered 2 census subdivisions: Strathcona A (905 ha, 0.1 %); Mount Waddington D (291 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 22.9 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?: From the official burnt perimeter of Canada’s CWFIS (NBAC, Natural Resources Canada) or, for the current season and until NBAC publishes it, the one rebuilt by GWIS (Copernicus); from NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots; and from the administrative boundaries of Canada. 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 ↗
CWFIS · Interactive map ↗

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

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How we know this

Perimeter: NBAC (Natural Resources Canada), official.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 10 August 2018 to 24 August 2018. 545 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: it comes from the National Burned Area Composite (NBAC) of the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS), Natural Resources Canada, which maps it on satellite imagery and publishes it under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Until NBAC publishes the current season, this year’s fires carry the perimeter rebuilt from heat detections by GWIS (Copernicus, CC BY 4.0), which is approximate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Census subdivision boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per census subdivision is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from official figures.

Where it burned