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Sawmill Fire, April 2017 Pima

Out · last detection 24 Apr 2017, 20:43 UTC

The fire started on 23 April 2017 in Pima, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 19,149 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 11th largest in Arizona since 2016 (of 380 with a page). Number 42 in United States in 2017, of 619.

Burnt area
19,149ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
23 Apr 2017 – 23 Apr 2017
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
23 Apr
2017
Heat detections
420
in a single hotspot: 112 MW
Danger at start
60
Extreme · FWI index
Energy released
841MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

24 Apr 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Apr23 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

2324

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
68km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 7 May.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Pima where it started
    19,163 ha reached on 23 Apr
    0.8 %

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)
23 Apr 31.0 °C 8 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
24 Apr after 28.1 °C 11 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
25 Apr after 23.7 °C 17 % 68 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
26 Apr after 24.5 °C 13 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
27 Apr after 26.9 °C 19 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
28 Apr after 22.5 °C 19 % 76 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
29 Apr after 17.5 °C 12 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
30 Apr after 23.2 °C 8 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 May after 27.2 °C 8 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
2 May after 28.2 °C 10 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 May after 29.6 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
4 May after 32.9 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
5 May after 33.0 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 May after 28.7 °C 12 % 69 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
7 May after 21.9 °C 25 % 68 km/h 1.1 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Apr 2017
After · 30 Apr 2017

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 · 420Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sawmill fire last?
It burned between 23 April 2017 and 23 April 2017: 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 19,149 hectares (191.5 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Pima (19,163 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.0 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, 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

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
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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.

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.