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Rabbit Foot Fire, August 2018 Lemhi, Custer

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2018, 21:00 UTC

The fire started on 2 August 2018 in Custer, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 58 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 13,683 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the 28th largest in Idaho since 2016 (of 379 with a page). Number 52 in United States in 2018, of 511.

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Burnt area
13,683ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
≈ 58days
2 Aug 2018 – 28 Sept 2018
Counties hit
2
counties
Started on
2 Aug
2018
Heat detections
2,712
in a single hotspot: 625 MW
Danger at start
38
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Aug28 Sept
28 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

3 Aug 2018 · 1,590 MW · 25 4 Aug 2018 · 884 MW · 79 5 Aug 2018 · 85 MW · 21 6 Aug 2018 · 657 MW · 38 7 Aug 2018 · 1,737 MW · 73 8 Aug 2018 · 2,482 MW · 170 9 Aug 2018 · 4,439 MW · 154 10 Aug 2018 · 2,083 MW · 153 11 Aug 2018 · 894 MW · 116 12 Aug 2018 · 8,921 MW · 273 13 Aug 2018 · 4,302 MW · 322 14 Aug 2018 · 6,506 MW · 396 15 Aug 2018 · 7,153 MW · 348 16 Aug 2018 · 1,394 MW · 244 17 Aug 2018 · 254 MW · 125 18 Aug 2018 · 2 MW · 2 19 Aug 2018 · 23 MW · 9 20 Aug 2018 · 9 MW · 6 22 Aug 2018 · 1 MW · 2 23 Aug 2018 · 139 MW · 13 24 Aug 2018 · 58 MW · 12 25 Aug 2018 · 927 MW · 42 1 Sept 2018 · 6 MW · 3 2 Sept 2018 · 32 MW · 4 3 Sept 2018 · 60 MW · 5 4 Sept 2018 · 7 MW · 3 5 Sept 2018 · 123 MW · 8 6 Sept 2018 · 8 MW · 9 7 Sept 2018 · 18 MW · 11 8 Sept 2018 · 99 MW · 11 9 Sept 2018 · 34 MW · 11 10 Sept 2018 · 10 MW · 6 11 Sept 2018 · 6 MW · 5 12 Sept 2018 · 7 MW · 6 16 Sept 2018 · 2 MW · 1 17 Sept 2018 · 2 MW · 1 19 Sept 2018 · 1 MW · 1 21 Sept 2018 · 1 MW · 1 22 Sept 2018 · 11 MW · 2 28 Sept 2018 · 3 MW · 1
3 Aug 9 Aug 12 Aug 15 Aug 22 Aug 3 Sept 9 Sept 19 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

29°high
68km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.9 mm on 30 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 8.6% of the area of London (137 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. Lemhi
    9,991 ha reached on 3 Aug
    0.8 %
  2. Custer where it started
    3,690 ha reached on 7 Aug
    0.3 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
2 Aug 24.9 °C 11 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
3 Aug 21.6 °C 9 % 68 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 42
4 Aug 20.3 °C 11 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
5 Aug 18.2 °C 22 % 24 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 18
6 Aug 21.8 °C 15 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
7 Aug 23.4 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Aug 26.7 °C 7 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Aug 28.2 °C 9 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Aug 29.0 °C 8 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Aug 26.7 °C 12 % 56 km/h 0.8 mm Very high 39
12 Aug 23.6 °C 11 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Aug 23.3 °C 12 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Aug 23.8 °C 8 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Aug 25.4 °C 6 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Aug 22.7 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
17 Aug 21.3 °C 22 % 45 km/h 3.1 mm Low 8
18 Aug 18.8 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 16
19 Aug 20.1 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
20 Aug 14.7 °C 33 % 36 km/h 7.4 mm Very low 2
21 Aug 14.0 °C 40 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
22 Aug 15.4 °C 29 % 55 km/h 2.4 mm Very low 5
23 Aug 20.5 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
24 Aug 17.5 °C 19 % 58 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 17
25 Aug 17.2 °C 20 % 56 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
26 Aug 12.4 °C 29 % 51 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 12
27 Aug 5.3 °C 80 % 36 km/h 7.0 mm Very low 0
28 Aug 15.3 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
29 Aug 19.1 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
30 Aug 18.2 °C 22 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
31 Aug 17.1 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
1 Sept 18.2 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
2 Sept 19.6 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
3 Sept 20.2 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
4 Sept 20.7 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
5 Sept 21.9 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
6 Sept 20.4 °C 15 % 54 km/h 0.6 mm High 27
7 Sept 21.2 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Sept 19.6 °C 15 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Sept 19.1 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
10 Sept 18.9 °C 14 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Sept 15.6 °C 19 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
12 Sept 10.6 °C 28 % 50 km/h 2.0 mm Low 6
13 Sept 8.4 °C 44 % 44 km/h 1.7 mm Very low 4
14 Sept 13.5 °C 21 % 49 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 11
15 Sept 13.0 °C 22 % 54 km/h 2.3 mm Low 6
16 Sept 14.7 °C 16 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
17 Sept 16.8 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
18 Sept 16.6 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
19 Sept 12.4 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 15
20 Sept 11.7 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
21 Sept 16.3 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
22 Sept 16.7 °C 16 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
23 Sept 9.1 °C 36 % 47 km/h 1.3 mm Low 9
24 Sept 7.3 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
25 Sept 10.5 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
26 Sept 13.9 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
27 Sept 16.4 °C 24 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
28 Sept 16.3 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
29 Sept after 16.2 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
30 Sept after 6.2 °C 45 % 46 km/h 5.9 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Jul 2018
After · 5 Oct 2018

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 · 2,712Every 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 Foot Fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (2 August 2018). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 28 September 2018 (58 days from 2 August 2018), 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 13,683 hectares (136.8 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire entered 2 counties: Lemhi (9,991 ha, 0.8 %); Custer (3,690 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.0 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 · 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. 2,712 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.