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Ranch Fire, November 2019 Tehama

Out · last detection 4 Nov 2019, 22:02 UTC

The fire started on 3 November 2019 in Tehama, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,185 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 261th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 185 in United States in 2019, of 367.

Burnt area
1,185ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
3 Nov 2019 – 3 Nov 2019
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
3 Nov
2019
Heat detections
121
in a single hotspot: 133 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
1.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

4 Nov 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Nov3 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

34

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

The weather it burned in

28°high
27km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 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.

What happened to each town

  1. Tehama where it started
    1,179 ha reached on 3 Nov
    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)
3 Nov 26.1 °C 14 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
4 Nov after 27.8 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Nov after 27.1 °C 13 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Nov after 25.8 °C 15 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Nov after 24.3 °C 16 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Nov after 25.6 °C 15 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Nov after 26.1 °C 13 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
10 Nov after 28.4 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Nov after 26.9 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Nov after 23.6 °C 28 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
13 Nov after 21.9 °C 30 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
14 Nov after 20.4 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Nov after 20.1 °C 47 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
16 Nov after 24.4 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Nov after 27.7 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Oct 2019
After · 10 Nov 2019

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 · 121Every 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 Ranch fire last?
It burned between 3 November 2019 and 3 November 2019: 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 1,185 hectares (11.8 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Tehama (1,179 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.8 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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.