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Silvertip Fire, July 2026 Flathead

Out · last detection 25 Jul 2026, 21:44 UTC

The fire started on 24 July 2026 in Flathead, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 2,946 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 82th largest in Montana since 2016 (of 302 with a page). Number 138 in United States in 2026, of 423.

Burnt area
2,946ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
24 Jul 2026 – 24 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
24 Jul
2026
Heat detections
517
in a single hotspot: 260 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Energy released
51MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

25 Jul 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jul24 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

2425

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

The weather it burned in

27°high
30km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Flathead where it started
    2,911 ha reached on 24 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)
24 Jul 26.8 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Jul after 29.2 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Jul after 25.0 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Jul after 23.5 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Jul after 25.5 °C 18 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Jul after 25.1 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Jul after 26.5 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Jul after 26.4 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Aug after 28.5 °C 16 % 69 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Aug after 16.8 °C 21 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Aug after 14.9 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Jul 2026
After · 31 Jul 2026

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 · Copernicus

On 28 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 125 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 73: 4.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak125 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM10128 µg/m³
Optical depth1.37
22232425262728293031123
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 517Every 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 Silvertip fire last?
It burned between 24 July 2026 and 24 July 2026: 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 2,946 hectares (29.5 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Flathead (2,911 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.8 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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.