Rapides fire, October 2026 Avoyelles, Rapides, St. Landry
Satellites first detected fire on 20 October 2026 in Rapides, United States. It was active for 10 days, with 29 heat detections and an area with fire of about 406 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 4 counties.
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NIFC has not yet published the perimeter of this fire. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). When the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.
- Area with fire
- ≈ 406ha
- rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
- Duration
- 10days
- 20 Oct 2026 – 29 Oct 2026
- Counties hit
- 4
- counties
- Started on
- 20 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 29
- in a single hotspot: 35 MW
- Danger at start
- 16
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 46MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.4 mm on 31 Oct.
What happened to each county
-
252 ha reached on 20 Oct0.1 %
-
Rapides where it started84 ha reached on 20 Oct0.0 %
-
70 ha reached on 21 Oct0.0 %
-
0 ha reached on 26 Oct0.0 %
Area with fire inside each county, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until NIFC publishes the official perimeter. 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.
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Oct | 25.7 °C | 32 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 21 Oct | 26.6 °C | 26 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 22 Oct | 28.6 °C | 22 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 23 Oct | 29.3 °C | 25 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 24 Oct | 28.3 °C | 30 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 25 Oct | 26.1 °C | 30 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 26 Oct | 26.6 °C | 33 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 27 Oct | 27.3 °C | 41 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 28 Oct | 28.7 °C | 36 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 29 Oct | 28.6 °C | 29 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 30 Oct after | 26.9 °C | 48 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 31 Oct after | 28.8 °C | 56 % | 31 km/h | 3.4 mm | Very low 4 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 22 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 29Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Rapides fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 20 October 2026 to 29 October 2026 (10 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
- How much area did it burn?
- There is no official perimeter yet: NIFC has not published it. Heat detections rebuild about 406 hectares with fire (4.1 km²).
- Which counties burned?
- The fire entered 4 counties: Avoyelles (252 ha, 0.1 %); Rapides (84 ha, 0.0 %); St. Landry (70 ha, 0.0 %); Evangeline (0 ha, 0.0 %).
- Is the Rapides fire still active?
- No fire detections since 29 Oct 2026, 20:19 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 29.3 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 28 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 ›
- NIFC · National Interagency Fire Center ↗
- InciWeb · Incident Information System ↗
- MTBS · Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity ↗
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 30 October 2026.
- Page published (≈ 406 ha).
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
- No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 406 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
- Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 29 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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.