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Skull Flat 2 Fire, October 2019 Beaver

Out · last detection 19 Nov 2019, 09:17 UTC

The fire started on 2 October 2019 in Beaver, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 49 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,022 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 103th largest in Utah since 2016 (of 165 with a page). Number 208 in United States in 2019, of 367.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Briggs · 2016Skull Flat · 2019Cottonwood · 2026Thompson Ridge · 2023

Burnt area
1,022ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
≈ 49days
2 Oct 2019 – 19 Nov 2019
Counties hit
1
counties
Started on
2 Oct
2019
Heat detections
187
in a single hotspot: 281 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
83MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Oct19 Nov
19 Nov 2019

How it evolved, day by day

7 Oct 2019 · 35 MW · 1 8 Oct 2019 · 35 MW · 1 9 Oct 2019 · 18 MW · 1 12 Oct 2019 · 285 MW · 2 13 Oct 2019 · 82 MW · 6 14 Oct 2019 · 11 MW · 3 16 Oct 2019 · 219 MW · 11 17 Oct 2019 · 59 MW · 11 19 Oct 2019 · 1 MW · 1 20 Oct 2019 · 2 MW · 2 22 Oct 2019 · 1 MW · 1 23 Oct 2019 · 32 MW · 5 24 Oct 2019 · 81 MW · 10 25 Oct 2019 · 8 MW · 1 26 Oct 2019 · 1,166 MW · 10 27 Oct 2019 · 30 MW · 12 28 Oct 2019 · 3 MW · 1 31 Oct 2019 · 20 MW · 2 1 Nov 2019 · 48 MW · 7 2 Nov 2019 · 70 MW · 14 3 Nov 2019 · 128 MW · 14 4 Nov 2019 · 46 MW · 13 5 Nov 2019 · 14 MW · 5 6 Nov 2019 · 7 MW · 3 7 Nov 2019 · 5 MW · 4 8 Nov 2019 · 7 MW · 3 9 Nov 2019 · 21 MW · 1 10 Nov 2019 · 5 MW · 1 11 Nov 2019 · 95 MW · 9 12 Nov 2019 · 1 MW · 1 13 Nov 2019 · 7 MW · 3 14 Nov 2019 · 4 MW · 3 15 Nov 2019 · 5 MW · 1 18 Nov 2019 · 321 MW · 13 19 Nov 2019 · 16 MW · 11
7 Oct 14 Oct 22 Oct 26 Oct 27 Oct 3 Nov 8 Nov 13 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

18°high
74km/h · peak gust
2%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 23.7 mm on 20 Nov.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 104 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.6% of the area of London (10 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

  1. Beaver where it started
    1,017 ha reached on 7 Oct
    0.2 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
2 Oct 13.7 °C 4 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Oct 16.4 °C 6 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Oct 15.1 °C 2 % 74 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Oct 15.0 °C 5 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Oct 14.3 °C 4 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
7 Oct 17.0 °C 2 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
8 Oct 17.8 °C 6 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Oct 14.7 °C 9 % 72 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
10 Oct -0.5 °C 17 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Oct 9.0 °C 3 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Oct 11.1 °C 2 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Oct 12.6 °C 9 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
14 Oct 13.3 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Oct 15.7 °C 5 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Oct 17.2 °C 8 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
17 Oct 13.3 °C 19 % 66 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
18 Oct 7.1 °C 20 % 44 km/h 2.8 mm Low 6
19 Oct 8.2 °C 17 % 68 km/h 1.3 mm Low 11
20 Oct 1.7 °C 19 % 49 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 13
21 Oct 6.0 °C 19 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
22 Oct 10.6 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
23 Oct 8.7 °C 11 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Oct 4.6 °C 15 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Oct 11.9 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
26 Oct 13.8 °C 12 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Oct -0.7 °C 41 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
28 Oct -1.1 °C 16 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
29 Oct -3.9 °C 14 % 58 km/h 0.5 mm High 27
30 Oct -3.8 °C 11 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
31 Oct 6.5 °C 7 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
1 Nov 5.1 °C 9 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
2 Nov 8.8 °C 8 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Nov 9.9 °C 8 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
4 Nov 8.6 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Nov 9.9 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Nov 9.3 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Nov 10.4 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Nov 10.6 °C 9 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Nov 12.2 °C 10 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Nov 10.9 °C 10 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Nov 7.2 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Nov 8.5 °C 10 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
13 Nov 10.3 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
14 Nov 11.0 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Nov 10.7 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Nov 8.5 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Nov 9.5 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
18 Nov 11.5 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
19 Nov 7.8 °C 21 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Nov after 0.7 °C 81 % 55 km/h 23.7 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Sept 2019
After · 26 Nov 2019

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 · 187Every 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 Skull Flat 2 Fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (2 October 2019). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 19 November 2019 (49 days from 2 October 2019), 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 1,022 hectares (10.2 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Beaver (1,017 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 17.8 °C, humidity dropped to 2 % and gusts hit 74 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

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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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. 187 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.