How long did the Spring Creek Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (27 June 2018). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 11 July 2018 (15 days from 27 June 2018), 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 43,310 hectares (433.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire entered 2 counties: Huerfano (32,785 ha, 7.9 %); Costilla (10,607 ha, 3.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.7 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 53 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.

US · United States · 2018-06-27 → 2018-07-11

Spring Creek Fire, June 2018 Huerfano, Costilla

Out · last detection 11 Jul 2018, 09:17 UTC

The fire started on 27 June 2018 in Huerfano, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 43,310 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the 5th largest in Colorado since 2016 (of 167 with a page). Number 9 in United States in 2018, of 511.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sheep Head · 2026

Burnt area: 43,310ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 15days; 27 Jun 2018 – 11 Jul 2018
Counties hit: 2; counties
Started on: 27 Jun; 2018
Heat detections: 2,261; in a single hotspot: 1,221 MW
Danger at start: 44; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 3.1GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jun11 Jul

Play back 11 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

28 Jun 30 Jun 2 Jul 4 Jul 6 Jul 8 Jul 10 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

31°high

53km/h · peak gust

4%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.5 mm on 12 Jul.

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 27% of the area of London (433 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

Huerfano where it started

32,785 ha reached on 29 Jun

7.9 %
Costilla

10,607 ha reached on 28 Jun

3.3 %

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 area12 ha

Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 12 hectares of built-up land and about 200 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)
27 Jun	30.7 °C	4 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
28 Jun	30.2 °C	8 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
29 Jun	26.7 °C	7 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
30 Jun	27.4 °C	6 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
1 Jul	28.1 °C	8 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
2 Jul	26.7 °C	10 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
3 Jul	26.4 °C	12 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
4 Jul	28.7 °C	10 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
5 Jul	26.5 °C	38 %	50 km/h	7.9 mm	Low 6
6 Jul	26.2 °C	29 %	33 km/h	2.3 mm	Low 7
7 Jul	26.5 °C	22 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
8 Jul	27.7 °C	15 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
9 Jul	26.7 °C	16 %	44 km/h	0.2 mm	High 33
10 Jul	27.6 °C	18 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
11 Jul	25.4 °C	20 %	33 km/h	3.1 mm	Low 8
12 Jul after	24.1 °C	31 %	33 km/h	3.5 mm	Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Jun 2018

After · 18 Jul 2018

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.

Detections table · 2,261Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

535 haSheep Head HuerfanoJune 2026 · 4 days · 11 km away

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Spring Creek Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (27 June 2018). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 11 July 2018 (15 days from 27 June 2018), 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 43,310 hectares (433.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire entered 2 counties: Huerfano (32,785 ha, 7.9 %); Costilla (10,607 ha, 3.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.7 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 53 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

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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 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.
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. 2,261 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.

Where it burned