Saddle Mountain Fire, August 2018 Adams
The fire started on 2 August 2018 in Adams, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 739 hectares, spread across a single county.
It is the 238th largest in Washington since 2016 (of 285 with a page). Number 394 in United States in 2018, of 511.
Compare with…
We have the official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC) for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by county is there.
- Burnt area
- 739ha
- official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
- Duration
- 1day
- 2 Aug 2018 – 2 Aug 2018
- Counties hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 2 Aug
- 2018
- Danger at start
- 68
- Extreme · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 46 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
15% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 112 ha in 2017.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each county
-
Adams where it started728 ha0.2 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Aug | 34.4 °C | 13 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 3 Aug after | 30.1 °C | 19 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 4 Aug after | 31.0 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 5 Aug after | 34.2 °C | 13 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 6 Aug after | 36.8 °C | 9 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 7 Aug after | 38.6 °C | 9 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 8 Aug after | 41.7 °C | 2 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 9 Aug after | 42.5 °C | 2 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 10 Aug after | 42.3 °C | 10 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 11 Aug after | 33.0 °C | 14 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 12 Aug after | 28.6 °C | 24 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
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.
Other fires nearby
- 7,008 haEast Saddle AdamsAugust 2017 · 3 days · 5 km away
- 4,533 haWahluke Slope GrantSeptember 2018 · 1 day · 12 km away
- 3,163 haSaddle Mountain GrantJuly 2020 · 2 days · 18 km away
- 8,946 haGrantJuly 2018 · 2 days · 26 km away
- 3,527 haMatson FranklinOctober 2019 · 2 days · 32 km away
- 7,647 ha243 Command GrantJune 2019 · 4 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Saddle Mountain Fire last?
- It burned between 2 August 2018 and 2 August 2018: 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 739 hectares (7.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
- Which counties burned?
- The fire only entered Adams (728 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, class 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 ›
- NIFC · National Interagency Fire Center ↗
- InciWeb · Incident Information System ↗
- MTBS · Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity ↗
Satellite cross-check
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.
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.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), official.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.