How long did the Soda Fire last?

It burned between 5 June 2016 and 5 June 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 896 hectares (9.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered San Luis Obispo (888 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very 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.

US · United States · 2016-06-05 → 2016-06-05

Soda Fire, June 2016 San Luis Obispo

Out · last measured on 5 Jun 2016

The fire started on 5 June 2016 in San Luis Obispo, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 896 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 307th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 292 in United States in 2016, of 475.

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We have the official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC) for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by county is there.

Burnt area: 896ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: 1day; 5 Jun 2016 – 5 Jun 2016
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 5 Jun; 2016
Danger at start: 46; Very high · FWI index

The weather it burned in

32°high

40km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 29 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.

How big is it?

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

San Luis Obispo where it started

888 ha

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
5 Jun	32.0 °C	16 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
6 Jun after	32.2 °C	11 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
7 Jun after	32.4 °C	17 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
8 Jun after	30.3 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
9 Jun after	28.5 °C	21 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
10 Jun after	27.0 °C	22 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
11 Jun after	26.6 °C	24 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
12 Jun after	25.0 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.4 mm	High 34
13 Jun after	27.3 °C	22 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
14 Jun after	25.2 °C	16 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
15 Jun after	23.4 °C	23 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 May 2016

After · 12 Jun 2016

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.

Other fires nearby

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Soda Fire last?: It burned between 5 June 2016 and 5 June 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 896 hectares (9.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered San Luis Obispo (888 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very 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 · 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.

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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 do you think is wrong?

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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2015, 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.

Where it burned