How long did the Powers Ranch fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 September 2019 to 15 September 2019 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 September 2019 to 14 September 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 583 hectares (5.8 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Sutton (584 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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.

US · United States · 2019-09-13 → 2019-09-15

Powers Ranch Fire, September 2019 Sutton

Out · last detection 15 Sept 2019, 19:15 UTC

The fire started on 13 September 2019 in Sutton, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 583 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 256th largest in Texas since 2016 (of 327 with a page). Number 292 in United States in 2019, of 367.

The power measured by the satellite is low (16.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pope 2 · 2022 Rafter 4B · 2026 Powell Lease · 2019 Nethery Road · 2022

Burnt area: 583ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: 3days; 13 Sept 2019 – 15 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 13 Sept; 2019
Heat detections: 11; in a single hotspot: 17 MW
Danger at start: 44; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 24MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Sept15 Sept

Play back 15 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

13 Sept 14 Sept 15 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

34°high

37km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 0.4% of the area of London (5.8 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 town

Sutton where it started

584 ha reached on 13 Sept

0.2 %

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)
13 Sept	33.5 °C	22 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
14 Sept	33.8 °C	25 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
15 Sept	34.4 °C	24 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
16 Sept after	33.1 °C	31 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
17 Sept after	34.4 °C	26 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
18 Sept after	35.7 °C	24 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
19 Sept after	34.9 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
20 Sept after	33.3 °C	40 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
21 Sept after	33.7 °C	30 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
22 Sept after	33.1 °C	37 %	45 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 45
23 Sept after	33.2 °C	35 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
24 Sept after	33.9 °C	35 %	41 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 41
25 Sept after	34.0 °C	31 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Sept 2019

After · 22 Sept 2019

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 · 11Every 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

Other fires nearby

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Frequently asked questions

How long did the Powers Ranch fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 September 2019 to 15 September 2019 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 September 2019 to 14 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 583 hectares (5.8 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Sutton (584 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
NIFC · Fire maps ↗

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 September 2019 to 14 September 2019. 11 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.

Where it burned