Sam Jim Fire, September 2016 Coconino
The fire started on 4 September 2016 in Coconino, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 33 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 953 hectares, spread across a single county.
It is the 233th largest in Arizona since 2016 (of 380 with a page). Number 279 in United States in 2016, of 475.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 953ha
- official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
- Duration
- 33days
- 4 Sept 2016 – 6 Oct 2016
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 4 Sept
- 2016
- Heat detections
- 136
- in a single hotspot: 112 MW
- Danger at start
- 20
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 53MW
- 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 one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.2 mm on 8 Oct.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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 town
-
Coconino where it started943 ha reached on 5 Sept0.0 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Sept | 23.7 °C | 10 % | 59 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 5 Sept | 25.3 °C | 17 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 6 Sept | 24.5 °C | 22 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 7 Sept | 18.8 °C | 53 % | 26 km/h | 2.9 mm | Very low 1 |
| 8 Sept | 26.3 °C | 20 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 9 Sept | 27.2 °C | 18 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 10 Sept | 26.6 °C | 18 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 21 |
| 11 Sept | 26.0 °C | 19 % | 42 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 23 |
| 12 Sept | 22.0 °C | 33 % | 60 km/h | 1.7 mm | Moderate 11 |
| 13 Sept | 21.6 °C | 34 % | 71 km/h | 3.5 mm | Low 5 |
| 14 Sept | 22.4 °C | 25 % | 66 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 15 Sept | 23.4 °C | 16 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 16 Sept | 24.0 °C | 9 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 17 Sept | 25.1 °C | 10 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 18 Sept | 26.7 °C | 10 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 19 Sept | 27.9 °C | 11 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 20 Sept | 22.4 °C | 24 % | 33 km/h | 1.2 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 21 Sept | 24.1 °C | 46 % | 50 km/h | 4.5 mm | Very low 4 |
| 22 Sept | 20.5 °C | 35 % | 70 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 23 Sept | 17.0 °C | 16 % | 64 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 24 Sept | 17.9 °C | 17 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 25 Sept | 20.0 °C | 17 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 26 Sept | 21.9 °C | 20 % | 43 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 27 Sept | 18.4 °C | 42 % | 39 km/h | 6.6 mm | Very low 1 |
| 28 Sept | 20.3 °C | 39 % | 47 km/h | 3.4 mm | Very low 3 |
| 29 Sept | 18.6 °C | 56 % | 41 km/h | 5.8 mm | Very low 0 |
| 30 Sept | 21.4 °C | 27 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 1 Oct | 20.7 °C | 36 % | 24 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 6 |
| 2 Oct | 18.6 °C | 36 % | 53 km/h | 4.7 mm | Very low 2 |
| 3 Oct | 17.0 °C | 14 % | 76 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 4 Oct | 18.0 °C | 19 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 5 Oct | 18.0 °C | 25 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 6 Oct | 19.2 °C | 24 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 7 Oct after | 21.4 °C | 19 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 8 Oct after | 17.8 °C | 50 % | 32 km/h | 13.2 mm | Very low 0 |
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.
Detections table · 136Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,014 haWyrick NavajoJune 2021 · 4 days · 20 km away
- 3,917 haValentine GilaAugust 2023 · 80 days · 21 km away
- 3,386 haHorton CoconinoDecember 2024 · 31 days · 22 km away
- 6,503 haTinder CoconinoApril 2018 · 15 days · 32 km away
- 2,974 haHighline CoconinoJune 2017 · 20 days · 34 km away
- 4,299 haStill CoconinoSeptember 2023 · 1 day · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sam Jim fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 September 2016 to 6 October 2016 (33 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 September 2016 to 4 September 2016.
- How much area did it burn?
- The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 953 hectares (9.5 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
- Which counties burned?
- The fire only entered Coconino (943 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 27.9 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 76 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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
- NIFC · National Interagency Fire Center ↗
- InciWeb · Incident Information System ↗
- MTBS · Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity ↗
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.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), official.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 September 2016 to 4 September 2016. 136 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.
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.