How long did the Red Canyon Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (14 August 2025). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 21 August 2025 (8 days from 14 August 2025), 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 50,468 hectares (504.7 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Hot Springs (50,326 ha, 9.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 80, class Very extreme.

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 · 2025-08-14 → 2025-08-21

Red Canyon Fire, August 2025 Hot Springs

Out · last detection 21 Aug 2025, 09:05 UTC

The fire started on 14 August 2025 in Hot Springs, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 50,468 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 3th largest in Wyoming since 2016 (of 117 with a page). Number 5 in United States in 2025, of 327.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Zimmerman · 2018 Black Mountain · 2023 Neiber · 2020 Denver Jake · 2018

Burnt area: 50,468ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 8days; 14 Aug 2025 – 21 Aug 2025
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 14 Aug; 2025
Heat detections: 1,823; in a single hotspot: 477 MW
Danger at start: 52; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 7.8GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Aug21 Aug

Play back 21 Aug 2025

How it evolved, day by day

14 Aug 16 Aug 18 Aug 19 Aug 20 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

37km/h · peak gust

3%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 22 Aug.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2018.

2 ha Zimmerman fire, July 2018 2,470 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 32% of the area of London (505 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

Hot Springs where it started

50,326 ha reached on 14 Aug

9.7 %

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 2025

Built-up area0.66 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.66 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
14 Aug	33.2 °C	13 %	33 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 52
15 Aug	33.0 °C	12 %	31 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 49
16 Aug	31.7 °C	16 %	35 km/h	0.4 mm	Extreme 61
17 Aug	30.9 °C	17 %	31 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 46
18 Aug	32.1 °C	10 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
19 Aug	36.1 °C	3 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
20 Aug	36.1 °C	7 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 80
21 Aug	31.2 °C	19 %	30 km/h	0.5 mm	Extreme 54
22 Aug after	26.4 °C	36 %	33 km/h	2.5 mm	Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Aug 2025

After · 28 Aug 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 17 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 97 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 62: 4.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak97 µg/m³

Days over the guideline4 days

PM10102 µg/m³

Optical depth1.07

WHO 15

121314151617

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 · 1,823Every 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 Red Canyon Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (14 August 2025). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 21 August 2025 (8 days from 14 August 2025), 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 50,468 hectares (504.7 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Hot Springs (50,326 ha, 9.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 80, class Very extreme.
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.

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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What really happened?

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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.

How we know this

Perimeter: NIFC WFIGS (United States), 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. 1,823 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 2025, 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