How long did the Schroeder Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (29 March 2021). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 31 March 2021 (3 days from 29 March 2021), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 994 hectares (9.9 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Pennington (993 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 18.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 71 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 16, class Moderate.

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.

US · United States · 2021-03-29 → 2021-03-31

Schroeder Fire, March 2021 Pennington

Out · last detection 31 Mar 2021, 20:02 UTC

The fire started on 29 March 2021 in Pennington, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 994 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 26th largest in South Dakota since 2016 (of 48 with a page). Number 234 in United States in 2021, of 385.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 994ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 3days; 29 Mar 2021 – 31 Mar 2021
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 29 Mar; 2021
Heat detections: 54; in a single hotspot: 82 MW
Danger at start: 16; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 331MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Mar31 Mar

Play back 31 Mar 2021

How it evolved, day by day

29 Mar 30 Mar 31 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

19°high

71km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 19.2 mm on 6 Apr.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.6% of the area of London (9.9 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each county

Pennington where it started

993 ha reached on 29 Mar

0.1 %

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.

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 Mar	18.7 °C	16 %	71 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
30 Mar	3.3 °C	17 %	67 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
31 Mar	9.2 °C	12 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
1 Apr after	20.6 °C	5 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
2 Apr after	23.2 °C	5 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
3 Apr after	24.8 °C	6 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
4 Apr after	25.3 °C	6 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
5 Apr after	22.9 °C	9 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
6 Apr after	7.9 °C	37 %	45 km/h	19.2 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Mar 2021

After · 7 Apr 2021

Before After

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 · 54Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Schroeder Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (29 March 2021). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 31 March 2021 (3 days from 29 March 2021), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 994 hectares (9.9 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Pennington (993 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 18.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 71 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 16, class Moderate.
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 ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
NIFC · Fire maps ↗

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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What really happened?

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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.

How we know this

Perimeter: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), official.
The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 54 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.

Where it burned