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Soledad Fire, July 2020 Los Angeles

Out · last detection 6 Jul 2020, 09:06 UTC

The fire started on 5 July 2020 in Los Angeles, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 669 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 351th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 344 in United States in 2020, of 441.

The power measured by the satellite is low (2.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tick · 2019Sand · 2016Creek · 2017Saddleridge · 2019

Burnt area
669ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
≈ 2days
5 Jul 2020 – 6 Jul 2020
Counties hit
1
counties
Started on
5 Jul
2020
Heat detections
3
in a single hotspot: 2 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
5MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jul6 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

6 Jul 2020 · 5 MW · 3

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
45km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 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: 4 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.4% of the area of London (6.7 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. Los Angeles where it started
    672 ha reached on 6 Jul
    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 2020
Built-up area0.71 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.71 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (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)
5 Jul 35.1 °C 13 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Jul 33.6 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
7 Jul after 32.2 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
8 Jul after 31.3 °C 23 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Jul after 33.0 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Jul after 37.0 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
11 Jul after 38.5 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
12 Jul after 38.8 °C 12 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
13 Jul after 33.3 °C 18 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 Jul after 31.1 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
15 Jul after 31.1 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Jul after 32.5 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Jun 2020
After · 13 Jul 2020

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 · 3Every 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 Soledad Fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (5 July 2020). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 6 July 2020 (2 days from 5 July 2020), 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 669 hectares (6.7 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Los Angeles (672 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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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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. 3 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.