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Spoon Fire, July 2023 Gila

Out · last measured on 24 Jul 2023

The fire started on 24 July 2023 in Gila, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,910 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 137th largest in Arizona since 2016 (of 380 with a page). Number 91 in United States in 2023, of 305.

Burnt area
1,910ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
24 Jul 2023 – 24 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
24 Jul
2023
Heat detections
19
in a single hotspot: 34 MW
Danger at start
58
Extreme · FWI index

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jul24 Jul

The weather it burned in

39°high
44km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 31 Jul.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Gila where it started
    1,913 ha reached on 28 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 37.3 °C 12 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 Jul after 39.0 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Jul after 39.0 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
27 Jul after 37.8 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
28 Jul after 37.9 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 57
29 Jul after 35.4 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 49
30 Jul after 34.5 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 50
31 Jul after 32.1 °C 27 % 43 km/h 1.9 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Jul 2023
After · 31 Jul 2023

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 27 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1031 µg/m³
Optical depth0.44
222324252627
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 · 19Every 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 Spoon fire last?
It burned between 24 July 2023 and 24 July 2023: 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 1,910 hectares (19.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Gila (1,913 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 76, class Very 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

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.

Report an error
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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.