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Pine Gulch Fire, July 2020 Garfield, Mesa

Out · last detection 6 Sept 2020, 09:42 UTC

The fire started on 31 July 2020 in Garfield, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 38 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 55,919 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the 3th largest in Colorado since 2016 (of 167 with a page). Number 18 in United States in 2020, of 441.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Red Canyon · 2018

Burnt area
55,919ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
≈ 38days
31 Jul 2020 – 6 Sept 2020
Counties hit
2
counties
Started on
31 Jul
2020
Heat detections
4,613
in a single hotspot: 959 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
4.6GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Jul6 Sept
6 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

1 Aug 2020 · 442 MW · 29 2 Aug 2020 · 101 MW · 11 3 Aug 2020 · 1,226 MW · 20 4 Aug 2020 · 199 MW · 21 5 Aug 2020 · 4,889 MW · 274 6 Aug 2020 · 1,599 MW · 82 7 Aug 2020 · 5,266 MW · 83 8 Aug 2020 · 4,628 MW · 157 9 Aug 2020 · 4,110 MW · 162 10 Aug 2020 · 9,559 MW · 274 11 Aug 2020 · 27,712 MW · 544 12 Aug 2020 · 20,765 MW · 232 13 Aug 2020 · 2,864 MW · 145 14 Aug 2020 · 1,686 MW · 101 15 Aug 2020 · 12,174 MW · 366 16 Aug 2020 · 11,286 MW · 413 17 Aug 2020 · 4,562 MW · 242 18 Aug 2020 · 1,701 MW · 112 19 Aug 2020 · 8,042 MW · 585 20 Aug 2020 · 906 MW · 150 21 Aug 2020 · 3,188 MW · 166 22 Aug 2020 · 3,896 MW · 146 23 Aug 2020 · 1,665 MW · 194 24 Aug 2020 · 928 MW · 72 25 Aug 2020 · 103 MW · 25 27 Aug 2020 · 3 MW · 1 4 Sept 2020 · 105 MW · 3 5 Sept 2020 · 8 MW · 2 6 Sept 2020 · 2 MW · 1
1 Aug 6 Aug 11 Aug 16 Aug 21 Aug 27 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

32°high
76km/h · peak gust
2%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 18.0 mm on 8 Sept.

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 35% of the area of London (559 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. Garfield where it started
    47,606 ha reached on 3 Aug
    6.2 %
  2. Mesa
    8,226 ha reached on 1 Aug
    1.0 %

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 area1.6 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.6 hectares of 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)
31 Jul 31.5 °C 7 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Aug 31.4 °C 8 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Aug 32.1 °C 8 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Aug 31.1 °C 8 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
4 Aug 31.5 °C 3 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
5 Aug 29.2 °C 7 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
6 Aug 27.6 °C 6 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
7 Aug 27.8 °C 2 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
8 Aug 28.1 °C 4 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
9 Aug 29.2 °C 5 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
10 Aug 29.5 °C 5 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
11 Aug 27.9 °C 4 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
12 Aug 28.2 °C 5 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
13 Aug 29.4 °C 5 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
14 Aug 31.0 °C 5 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
15 Aug 30.6 °C 6 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
16 Aug 31.1 °C 4 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Aug 31.6 °C 3 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
18 Aug 32.3 °C 5 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Aug 31.4 °C 9 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
20 Aug 31.9 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.6 mm Very high 49
21 Aug 31.0 °C 9 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Aug 32.3 °C 4 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Aug 31.7 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Aug 29.9 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 Aug 29.9 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Aug 29.7 °C 15 % 25 km/h 1.6 mm High 24
27 Aug 28.4 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Aug 26.6 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Aug 23.2 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.9 mm High 31
30 Aug 26.6 °C 11 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Aug 23.2 °C 12 % 76 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 59
1 Sept 21.6 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 40
2 Sept 26.4 °C 9 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
3 Sept 28.6 °C 5 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Sept 30.2 °C 7 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Sept 30.9 °C 5 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
6 Sept 31.6 °C 5 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
7 Sept after 27.2 °C 7 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
8 Sept after 17.3 °C 13 % 55 km/h 18.0 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Jul 2020
After · 13 Sept 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 · 4,613Every 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 Pine Gulch Fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (31 July 2020). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 6 September 2020 (38 days from 31 July 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 55,919 hectares (559.2 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire entered 2 counties: Garfield (47,606 ha, 6.2 %); Mesa (8,226 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 2 % and gusts hit 76 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 69, 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 · 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.

Report an error
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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. 4,613 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.