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Mullen Fire, September 2020 Albany, Carbon, Jackson

Out · last detection 17 Oct 2020, 08:32 UTC

The fire started on 17 September 2020 in Albany, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 72,760 hectares, spread across 3 counties.

It is the largest fire in Wyoming since 2016 (of 117 with a page). Number 13 in United States in 2020, of 441.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Keystone · 2017Badger Creek · 2018Beaver Creek · 2016Ryan · 2018

Burnt area
72,760ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
≈ 31days
17 Sept 2020 – 17 Oct 2020
Counties hit
3
counties
Started on
17 Sept
2020
Heat detections
9,920
in a single hotspot: 1,976 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
9.4GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Sept17 Oct
17 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

17 Sept 2020 · 54 MW · 2 18 Sept 2020 · 1,027 MW · 28 19 Sept 2020 · 36,192 MW · 110 20 Sept 2020 · 1,600 MW · 85 21 Sept 2020 · 2,412 MW · 94 22 Sept 2020 · 2,457 MW · 125 23 Sept 2020 · 5,049 MW · 106 24 Sept 2020 · 7,481 MW · 232 25 Sept 2020 · 13,424 MW · 518 26 Sept 2020 · 40,887 MW · 1381 27 Sept 2020 · 3,703 MW · 654 28 Sept 2020 · 2,513 MW · 133 29 Sept 2020 · 12,074 MW · 450 30 Sept 2020 · 30,872 MW · 805 1 Oct 2020 · 11,669 MW · 658 2 Oct 2020 · 10,309 MW · 294 3 Oct 2020 · 12,315 MW · 538 4 Oct 2020 · 35,293 MW · 624 5 Oct 2020 · 19,542 MW · 1041 6 Oct 2020 · 14,208 MW · 724 7 Oct 2020 · 6,577 MW · 468 8 Oct 2020 · 11,105 MW · 386 9 Oct 2020 · 1,768 MW · 208 10 Oct 2020 · 361 MW · 95 11 Oct 2020 · 291 MW · 99 13 Oct 2020 · 55 MW · 10 14 Oct 2020 · 112 MW · 44 15 Oct 2020 · 10 MW · 1 16 Oct 2020 · 5 MW · 1 17 Oct 2020 · 8 MW · 6
17 Sept 22 Sept 26 Sept 27 Sept 2 Oct 7 Oct 13 Oct

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
113km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 18 Oct.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 344 ha in 2017, 148 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 46% of the area of London (728 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

  1. Albany where it started
    37,680 ha reached on 19 Sept
    3.4 %
  2. Carbon
    26,057 ha reached on 17 Sept
    1.3 %
  3. Jackson
    8,550 ha reached on 1 Oct
    2.0 %

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 area4.7 ha
Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.7 hectares of built-up land and about 50 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 Rain Danger (FWI)
17 Sept 22.3 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
18 Sept 20.8 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
19 Sept 20.5 °C 20 % 58 km/h 0.5 mm High 33
20 Sept 18.6 °C 24 % 68 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Sept 20.7 °C 21 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Sept 21.2 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.5 mm High 24
23 Sept 20.1 °C 21 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Sept 22.8 °C 17 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Sept 20.8 °C 17 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Sept 15.7 °C 29 % 84 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Sept 6.7 °C 52 % 56 km/h 2.5 mm Very low 5
28 Sept 9.1 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
29 Sept 18.9 °C 15 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
30 Sept 17.9 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
1 Oct 15.4 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
2 Oct 16.0 °C 18 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Oct 14.5 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
4 Oct 19.0 °C 22 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
5 Oct 18.0 °C 15 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Oct 20.9 °C 13 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
7 Oct 21.3 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Oct 20.4 °C 12 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Oct 19.4 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Oct 18.8 °C 20 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Oct 10.6 °C 32 % 85 km/h 4.0 mm Low 8
12 Oct 11.2 °C 24 % 84 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
13 Oct 14.2 °C 26 % 72 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
14 Oct 10.9 °C 23 % 113 km/h 1.9 mm Moderate 15
15 Oct 3.8 °C 29 % 70 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
16 Oct 10.3 °C 28 % 76 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
17 Oct 9.1 °C 36 % 92 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Oct after 7.7 °C 37 % 86 km/h 2.2 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Sept 2020
After · 24 Oct 2020

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 · 9,920Every 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 Mullen Fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (17 September 2020). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 17 October 2020 (31 days from 17 September 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 72,760 hectares (727.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire entered 3 counties: Albany (37,680 ha, 3.4 %); Carbon (26,057 ha, 1.3 %); Jackson (8,550 ha, 2.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 22.8 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 113 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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

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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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. 9,920 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.