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Springs Fire, July 2019 Mono

Out · last detection 3 Sept 2019, 10:02 UTC

The fire started on 26 July 2019 in Mono, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 40 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 2,437 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 189th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 111 in United States in 2019, of 367.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Clark · 2016Dexter · 2021Owens River · 2016Beach · 2020

Burnt area
2,437ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
≈ 40days
26 Jul 2019 – 3 Sept 2019
Counties hit
1
counties
Started on
26 Jul
2019
Heat detections
526
in a single hotspot: 90 MW
Danger at start
3
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
184MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Jul3 Sept
3 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

2 Aug 2019 · 3 MW · 2 3 Aug 2019 · 1 MW · 1 4 Aug 2019 · 2 MW · 1 6 Aug 2019 · 26 MW · 7 8 Aug 2019 · 64 MW · 11 9 Aug 2019 · 242 MW · 19 10 Aug 2019 · 179 MW · 17 11 Aug 2019 · 120 MW · 24 12 Aug 2019 · 58 MW · 9 13 Aug 2019 · 170 MW · 19 14 Aug 2019 · 261 MW · 26 15 Aug 2019 · 237 MW · 24 16 Aug 2019 · 276 MW · 40 17 Aug 2019 · 758 MW · 55 18 Aug 2019 · 431 MW · 39 19 Aug 2019 · 144 MW · 24 20 Aug 2019 · 76 MW · 10 21 Aug 2019 · 78 MW · 8 22 Aug 2019 · 3 MW · 4 23 Aug 2019 · 22 MW · 5 24 Aug 2019 · 51 MW · 6 25 Aug 2019 · 69 MW · 7 26 Aug 2019 · 16 MW · 5 27 Aug 2019 · 305 MW · 24 28 Aug 2019 · 123 MW · 15 29 Aug 2019 · 111 MW · 13 30 Aug 2019 · 625 MW · 17 31 Aug 2019 · 583 MW · 45 1 Sept 2019 · 492 MW · 34 2 Sept 2019 · 185 MW · 13 3 Sept 2019 · 6 MW · 2
2 Aug 9 Aug 14 Aug 17 Aug 19 Aug 24 Aug 29 Aug 3 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

28°high
60km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.6 mm on 4 Sept.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 93 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (24 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. Mono where it started
    2,427 ha reached on 2 Aug
    0.3 %

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 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)
26 Jul 18.6 °C 50 % 40 km/h 2.8 mm Very low 3
27 Jul 25.0 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
28 Jul 25.8 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Jul 24.2 °C 11 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Jul 24.2 °C 13 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
31 Jul 24.4 °C 12 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Aug 24.6 °C 15 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Aug 25.2 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Aug 26.5 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Aug 25.5 °C 10 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Aug 25.1 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Aug 23.6 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Aug 20.7 °C 26 % 43 km/h 2.5 mm Low 9
8 Aug 20.1 °C 22 % 52 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 21
9 Aug 19.2 °C 17 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Aug 18.0 °C 21 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Aug 22.5 °C 11 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Aug 24.2 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Aug 25.7 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Aug 27.0 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Aug 25.8 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Aug 26.3 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Aug 26.2 °C 10 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Aug 25.3 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Aug 24.8 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Aug 25.8 °C 6 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Aug 25.9 °C 12 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Aug 25.9 °C 11 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Aug 27.4 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Aug 27.7 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Aug 27.3 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Aug 27.7 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
27 Aug 26.8 °C 14 % 45 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 39
28 Aug 24.9 °C 23 % 50 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 42
29 Aug 24.3 °C 17 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Aug 24.5 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Aug 26.8 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
1 Sept 25.9 °C 10 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Sept 22.6 °C 24 % 40 km/h 4.1 mm Low 8
3 Sept 22.8 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 17
4 Sept after 22.0 °C 34 % 38 km/h 5.6 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Jul 2019
After · 10 Sept 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 · 526Every 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 Springs Fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (26 July 2019). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 3 September 2019 (40 days from 26 July 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 2,437 hectares (24.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Mono (2,427 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.7 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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

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. 526 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.