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Range 153 Fire, February 2024 El Paso

Out · last detection 26 Feb 2024, 19:49 UTC

The fire started on 25 February 2024 in El Paso, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 654 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 123th largest in Colorado since 2016 (of 167 with a page). Number 269 in United States in 2024, of 371.

Burnt area
654ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
25 Feb 2024 – 25 Feb 2024
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
25 Feb
2024
Heat detections
9
in a single hotspot: 78 MW
Danger at start
12
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
347MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

26 Feb 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Feb25 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

2526

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

The weather it burned in

19°high
57km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 7 Mar.

This area had burned before

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 636 ha in 2016, 11 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. El Paso where it started
    649 ha reached on 25 Feb
    0.1 %

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)
25 Feb 18.8 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
26 Feb after 18.0 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
27 Feb after 9.3 °C 43 % 57 km/h 4.7 mm Very low 1
28 Feb after 8.8 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.7 mm Very low 0
29 Feb after 16.8 °C 10 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
1 Mar after 18.0 °C 7 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
2 Mar after 18.8 °C 8 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
3 Mar after 15.7 °C 17 % 54 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 19
4 Mar after 7.7 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
5 Mar after 7.4 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.4 mm Low 8
6 Mar after 15.0 °C 12 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
7 Mar after 8.0 °C 39 % 32 km/h 2.1 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Feb 2024
After · 3 Mar 2024

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 24 February 2024 the air beside the fire reached 12 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak12 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1023 µg/m³
Optical depth0.20
232425262728
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 · 9Every 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 Range 153 fire last?
It burned between 25 February 2024 and 25 February 2024: 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 654 hectares (6.5 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered El Paso (649 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 18.8 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, class Moderate.
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.