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Rabbit Fire, July 2023 Riverside

Out · last detection 15 Jul 2023, 20:27 UTC

The fire started on 14 July 2023 in Riverside, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 3,490 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 155th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 49 in United States in 2023, of 305.

Burnt area
3,490ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
14 Jul 2023 – 14 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
14 Jul
2023
Heat detections
74
in a single hotspot: 102 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.8GW
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

41°high
42km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 45 ha in 2017, 172 ha in 2020.

What happened to each town

  1. Riverside where it started
    3,503 ha reached on 15 Jul
    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)
14 Jul 39.1 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Jul after 41.4 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Jul after 40.0 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Jul after 37.7 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Jul after 37.2 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Jul after 37.3 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Jul after 38.7 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Jul after 38.0 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Jul after 39.0 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Jul after 35.7 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Jul after 38.6 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 48
25 Jul after 39.0 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Jul 2023
After · 21 Jul 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 16 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 106 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 80: 5.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak106 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM10156 µg/m³
Optical depth0.72
121314151617
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 74Every 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 Rabbit fire last?
It burned between 14 July 2023 and 14 July 2023: 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 3,490 hectares (34.9 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Riverside (3,503 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.4 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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

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.