How long did the Sears fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 September 2020 to 28 September 2020 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2020 to 25 September 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 5,405 hectares (54.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Maricopa (5,446 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class 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.

US · United States · 2020-09-25 → 2020-09-28

Sears Fire, September 2020 Maricopa

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2020, 20:50 UTC

The fire started on 25 September 2020 in Maricopa, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 5,405 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 63th largest in Arizona since 2016 (of 380 with a page). Number 103 in United States in 2020, of 441.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mountain · 2019 Wildcat · 2024 River · 2019 Sand Stone · 2024

Burnt area: 5,405ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: 4days; 25 Sept 2020 – 28 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 25 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 268; in a single hotspot: 84 MW
Danger at start: 54; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 796MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Sept28 Sept

Play back 28 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

25 Sept 26 Sept 27 Sept 28 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

35°high

42km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 76 ha in 2019.

76 ha Mountain fire, June 2019 3,040 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (54 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 town

Maricopa where it started

5,446 ha reached on 25 Sept

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	Danger (FWI)
25 Sept	34.6 °C	14 %	42 km/h	Extreme 54
26 Sept	33.3 °C	14 %	41 km/h	Extreme 52
27 Sept	33.4 °C	12 %	36 km/h	Very high 50
28 Sept	34.3 °C	10 %	24 km/h	Very high 48
29 Sept after	34.0 °C	8 %	26 km/h	Very high 50
30 Sept after	35.1 °C	9 %	29 km/h	Very high 50
1 Oct after	36.1 °C	5 %	28 km/h	Extreme 55
2 Oct after	35.3 °C	6 %	30 km/h	Extreme 54
3 Oct after	35.1 °C	6 %	36 km/h	Extreme 58
4 Oct after	34.4 °C	5 %	31 km/h	Extreme 54
5 Oct after	34.1 °C	7 %	35 km/h	Extreme 58
6 Oct after	34.1 °C	7 %	32 km/h	Extreme 57
7 Oct after	33.6 °C	7 %	36 km/h	Extreme 59
8 Oct after	32.2 °C	10 %	38 km/h	Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Sept 2020

After · 5 Oct 2020

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 · 268Every 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

Other fires nearby

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sears fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 September 2020 to 28 September 2020 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2020 to 25 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 5,405 hectares (54.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Maricopa (5,446 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
NIFC · Fire maps ↗

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 September 2020 to 25 September 2020. 268 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