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North Fork Fire, June 2022 Yukon-Koyukuk

Out · last detection 15 Jul 2022, 23:01 UTC

The fire started on 21 June 2022 in Yukon-Koyukuk, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 24,388 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 34th largest in Alaska since 2016 (of 472 with a page). Number 24 in United States in 2022, of 493.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Trail Creek · 2019

Burnt area
24,388ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
≈ 25days
21 Jun 2022 – 15 Jul 2022
Counties hit
1
counties
Started on
21 Jun
2022
Heat detections
1,317
in a single hotspot: 246 MW
Danger at start
6
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Jun15 Jul
15 Jul 2022

How it evolved, day by day

21 Jun 2022 · 462 MW · 8 23 Jun 2022 · 447 MW · 14 24 Jun 2022 · 885 MW · 59 25 Jun 2022 · 1,356 MW · 90 26 Jun 2022 · 90 MW · 11 27 Jun 2022 · 2,544 MW · 145 28 Jun 2022 · 2,181 MW · 76 29 Jun 2022 · 4,140 MW · 273 30 Jun 2022 · 4,398 MW · 225 1 Jul 2022 · 1,017 MW · 83 2 Jul 2022 · 620 MW · 52 3 Jul 2022 · 5 MW · 2 4 Jul 2022 · 142 MW · 18 5 Jul 2022 · 467 MW · 40 9 Jul 2022 · 1,181 MW · 38 10 Jul 2022 · 197 MW · 39 11 Jul 2022 · 498 MW · 60 12 Jul 2022 · 335 MW · 55 15 Jul 2022 · 386 MW · 29
21 Jun 25 Jun 28 Jun 30 Jun 1 Jul 4 Jul 10 Jul 15 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

26°high
50km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.1 mm on 16 Jul.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 15% of the area of London (244 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. Yukon-Koyukuk where it started
    26,331 ha reached on 21 Jun
    0.1 %

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)
21 Jun 20.8 °C 36 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Low 6
22 Jun 17.4 °C 47 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
23 Jun 16.4 °C 51 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
24 Jun 17.2 °C 45 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
25 Jun 21.5 °C 36 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
26 Jun 21.4 °C 43 % 36 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 13
27 Jun 21.1 °C 43 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
28 Jun 17.9 °C 49 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
29 Jun 20.1 °C 40 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
30 Jun 22.7 °C 38 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
1 Jul 24.0 °C 37 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
2 Jul 26.4 °C 35 % 23 km/h 1.6 mm Low 6
3 Jul 22.8 °C 51 % 20 km/h 1.0 mm Low 6
4 Jul 22.9 °C 49 % 24 km/h 0.5 mm Low 10
5 Jul 22.5 °C 52 % 31 km/h 0.9 mm Low 8
6 Jul 25.0 °C 46 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
7 Jul 21.5 °C 63 % 21 km/h 2.7 mm Very low 3
8 Jul 24.1 °C 42 % 19 km/h 0.5 mm Low 6
9 Jul 25.1 °C 34 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
10 Jul 25.0 °C 48 % 28 km/h 2.0 mm Very low 5
11 Jul 22.6 °C 59 % 32 km/h 3.2 mm Very low 2
12 Jul 20.3 °C 45 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
13 Jul 15.1 °C 49 % 39 km/h 2.6 mm Very low 3
14 Jul 16.0 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
15 Jul 16.7 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.2 mm Low 10
16 Jul after 12.9 °C 59 % 25 km/h 9.1 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Jun 2022
After · 22 Jul 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 · 1,317Every 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 North Fork Fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (21 June 2022). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 15 July 2022 (25 days from 21 June 2022), 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 24,388 hectares (243.9 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Yukon-Koyukuk (26,331 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.4 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, 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

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. 1,317 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.