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Pershing fire, July 2017 Pershing

Out · last detection 15 Jul 2017, 21:49 UTC

The fire started on 14 July 2017 in Pershing, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 8,842 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 30th largest in Nevada since 2016 (of 237 with a page). Number 91 in United States in 2017, of 619.

Burnt area
8,842ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
14 Jul 2017 – 14 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
14 Jul
2017
Heat detections
128
in a single hotspot: 172 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jul14 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

15

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
44km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity

It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 214 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Pershing where it started
    8,873 ha reached on 15 Jul
    0.6 %

Burnt area inside each county, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
14 Jul 35.7 °C 9 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Jul after 34.6 °C 7 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
16 Jul after 33.0 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
17 Jul after 33.1 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
18 Jul after 32.3 °C 7 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
19 Jul after 32.1 °C 5 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
20 Jul after 31.0 °C 5 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
21 Jul after 33.1 °C 9 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
22 Jul after 34.7 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
23 Jul after 36.4 °C 8 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 51
24 Jul after 32.8 °C 9 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
25 Jul after 32.0 °C 8 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Jul after 31.3 °C 16 % 46 km/h 0.5 mm Extreme 55
27 Jul after 31.2 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Jul after 34.1 °C 7 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
29 Jul after 33.7 °C 6 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Jul 2017
After · 21 Jul 2017

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 · 128Every 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 Pershing fire last?
It burned between 14 July 2017 and 14 July 2017: 1 day, according to the start date recorded by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) and the heat detections seen by satellite.
How much area did it burn?
The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 8,842 hectares (88.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Pershing (8,873 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, class 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

Satellite cross-check

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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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.

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.