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School Fire, July 2016 Catron

Out · last detection 10 Jul 2016, 20:44 UTC

The fire started on 9 July 2016 in Catron, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 2,958 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 53th largest in New Mexico since 2016 (of 204 with a page). Number 116 in United States in 2016, of 475.

Burnt area
2,958ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
9 Jul 2016 – 9 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
9 Jul
2016
Heat detections
560
in a single hotspot: 163 MW
Danger at start
17
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
83MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Jul9 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

10

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
58km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.1 mm on 19 Jul.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Catron where it started
    2,947 ha reached on 10 Jul
    0.2 %

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)
9 Jul 27.8 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 17
10 Jul after 27.4 °C 20 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
11 Jul after 26.9 °C 16 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Jul after 27.7 °C 13 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Jul after 29.0 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
14 Jul after 29.4 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Jul after 28.1 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Jul after 27.7 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Jul after 28.1 °C 22 % 31 km/h 2.3 mm Low 10
18 Jul after 26.0 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
19 Jul after 26.0 °C 29 % 34 km/h 3.1 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Jul 2016
After · 16 Jul 2016

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 · 560Every 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 School fire last?
It burned between 9 July 2016 and 9 July 2016: 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 2,958 hectares (29.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Catron (2,947 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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

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.

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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.