Sandy Fire, August 2026 Kenedy, Willacy
The fire started on 29 August 2026 in Kenedy, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 844 hectares, spread across 2 counties.
It is the 202th largest in Texas since 2016 (of 327 with a page). Number 290 in United States in 2026, of 423.
The power measured by the satellite is low (23.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 844ha
- official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
- Duration
- 5days
- 29 Aug 2026 – 2 Sept 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- counties
- Started on
- 29 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 43
- in a single hotspot: 24 MW
- Danger at start
- 39
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 167MW
- 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 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 6 Sept.
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
-
Kenedy where it started842 ha reached on 29 Aug0.2 %
-
2 ha0.0 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Aug | 37.9 °C | 40 % | 39 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 39 |
| 30 Aug | 39.5 °C | 35 % | 44 km/h | 4.4 mm | High 26 |
| 31 Aug | 39.6 °C | 30 % | 46 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 45 |
| 1 Sept | 39.7 °C | 29 % | 43 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 45 |
| 2 Sept | 41.2 °C | 27 % | 45 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 48 |
| 3 Sept after | 41.1 °C | 31 % | 53 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 4 Sept after | 39.4 °C | 37 % | 43 km/h | 0.6 mm | Very high 41 |
| 5 Sept after | 39.0 °C | 36 % | 44 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 41 |
| 6 Sept after | 38.0 °C | 37 % | 41 km/h | 3.0 mm | High 25 |
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 1 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 19 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 · 43Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,465 haHayfield South KenedyMarch 2022 · 4 days · 31 km away
- 2,256 haPolo KenedyFebruary 2022 · 7 days · 31 km away
- 3,959 haKing BrooksMarch 2021 · 2 days · 33 km away
- 3,162 haVib BrooksMarch 2022 · 2 days · 35 km away
- 747 haBrooksFebruary 2022 · 1 day · 38 km away
- 569 haElectric Slide BrooksAugust 2023 · 1 day · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sandy fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 August 2026 to 2 September 2026 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2026 to 29 August 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 844 hectares (8.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
- Which counties burned?
- The fire entered 2 counties: Kenedy (842 ha, 0.2 %); Willacy (2 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 41.2 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very 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: NIFC WFIGS (United States), official.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 29 August 2026 to 29 August 2026. 43 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.