How long did the Rough Draw Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (24 July 2021). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 26 July 2021 (8 days from 19 July 2021), 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 1,054 hectares (10.5 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Rosebud (1,044 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 74, 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 · 2021-07-19 → 2021-07-26

Rough Draw Fire, July 2021 Rosebud

Out · last detection 26 Jul 2021, 20:10 UTC

The fire started on 19 July 2021 in Rosebud, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,054 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 174th largest in Montana since 2016 (of 302 with a page). Number 226 in United States in 2021, of 385.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cottonwood · 2017 Slough Grass · 2021 Slough Grass · 2026 Painted Hill · 2017

Burnt area: 1,054ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 8days; 19 Jul 2021 – 26 Jul 2021
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 19 Jul; 2021
Heat detections: 114; in a single hotspot: 111 MW
Danger at start: 74; Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 318MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jul26 Jul

Play back 26 Jul 2021

How it evolved, day by day

19 Jul 21 Jul 25 Jul 26 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

38°high

53km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 4 Aug.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 43 ha in 2017.

43 ha Cottonwood fire, July 2017 794 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 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

Rosebud where it started

1,044 ha reached on 19 Jul

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.

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)
19 Jul	38.1 °C	14 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
20 Jul	30.2 °C	26 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
21 Jul	32.4 °C	28 %	19 km/h	0.1 mm	High 36
22 Jul	32.0 °C	27 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
23 Jul	32.7 °C	11 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 48
24 Jul	32.9 °C	10 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
25 Jul	36.6 °C	11 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
26 Jul	36.8 °C	7 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
27 Jul after	39.0 °C	10 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
28 Jul after	32.0 °C	18 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
29 Jul after	30.4 °C	30 %	52 km/h	0.6 mm	Extreme 50
30 Jul after	32.6 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
31 Jul after	33.6 °C	13 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
1 Aug after	33.7 °C	13 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
2 Aug after	35.0 °C	12 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
3 Aug after	27.8 °C	23 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
4 Aug after	32.7 °C	19 %	48 km/h	1.2 mm	Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Jul 2021

After · 2 Aug 2021

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 · 114Every 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 Rough Draw Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (24 July 2021). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 26 July 2021 (8 days from 19 July 2021), 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 1,054 hectares (10.5 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Rosebud (1,044 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 74, 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.

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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: 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. 114 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.

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