How long did the Rainbow 2 Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (30 June 2019). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 25 July 2019 (26 days from 30 June 2019), 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 7,456 hectares (74.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Southeast Fairbanks (7,509 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.7 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, class 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 · 2019-06-30 → 2019-07-25

Rainbow 2 Fire, June 2019 Southeast Fairbanks

Out · last detection 25 Jul 2019, 14:07 UTC

The fire started on 30 June 2019 in Southeast Fairbanks, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 7,456 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 122th largest in Alaska since 2016 (of 472 with a page). Number 40 in United States in 2019, of 367.

Compare with…

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Burnt area: 7,456ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 26days; 30 Jun 2019 – 25 Jul 2019
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 30 Jun; 2019
Heat detections: 1,220; in a single hotspot: 139 MW
Danger at start: 9; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 689MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jun25 Jul

Play back 25 Jul 2019

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jun 7 Jul 9 Jul 10 Jul 15 Jul 20 Jul 23 Jul

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

43km/h · peak gust

27%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 12.6 mm on 26 Jul.

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 4.7% of the area of London (75 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

Southeast Fairbanks where it started

7,509 ha reached on 30 Jun

0.1 %

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)
30 Jun	26.9 °C	43 %	39 km/h	1.7 mm	Low 9
1 Jul	17.9 °C	51 %	27 km/h	1.4 mm	Very low 4
2 Jul	20.5 °C	43 %	13 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
3 Jul	26.0 °C	35 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
4 Jul	20.7 °C	64 %	19 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 10
5 Jul	26.6 °C	37 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
6 Jul	27.3 °C	36 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
7 Jul	27.4 °C	35 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
8 Jul	27.1 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
9 Jul	28.7 °C	27 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
10 Jul	26.3 °C	33 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
11 Jul	24.8 °C	43 %	43 km/h	6.0 mm	Very low 4
12 Jul	17.7 °C	76 %	30 km/h	21.3 mm	Very low 0
13 Jul	22.4 °C	48 %	22 km/h	1.6 mm	Very low 0
14 Jul	23.9 °C	43 %	24 km/h	1.6 mm	Very low 2
15 Jul	24.3 °C	36 %	20 km/h	0.4 mm	Low 5
16 Jul	17.6 °C	66 %	18 km/h	5.7 mm	Very low 0
17 Jul	22.8 °C	52 %	18 km/h	0.7 mm	Very low 1
18 Jul	23.9 °C	60 %	25 km/h	3.5 mm	Very low 1
19 Jul	19.7 °C	55 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 1
20 Jul	20.4 °C	55 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 4
21 Jul	23.0 °C	44 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
22 Jul	26.4 °C	38 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
23 Jul	27.4 °C	36 %	16 km/h	0.5 mm	Low 10
24 Jul	25.3 °C	44 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
25 Jul	19.7 °C	58 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 11
26 Jul after	15.9 °C	77 %	14 km/h	12.6 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Jun 2019

After · 1 Aug 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 · 1,220Every 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

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Rainbow 2 Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (30 June 2019). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 25 July 2019 (26 days from 30 June 2019), 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 7,456 hectares (74.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Southeast Fairbanks (7,509 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.7 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, class 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
NIFC · Fire maps ↗

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.

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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. 1,220 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.

Where it burned