How long did the St. Clements fire last?

It burned between 16 May 2021 and 16 May 2021: 1 day, according to the dates recorded by Canada’s CWFIS and the heat detections seen by satellite.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter mapped by Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) is 1,294 hectares (12.9 km²). Other tallies, such as those of provincial agencies, may give slightly different figures.

Which census subdivisions burned?

The fire only entered St. Clements (1,292 ha, 1.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 26.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the official burnt perimeter of Canada’s CWFIS (NBAC, Natural Resources Canada) or, for the current season and until NBAC publishes it, the one rebuilt by GWIS (Copernicus); from NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots; and from the administrative boundaries of Canada. It is not an official report.

CA · Canada · 2021-05-16 → 2021-05-16

St. Clements fire, May 2021 St. Clements

Out · last measured on 16 May 2021

The fire started on 16 May 2021 in St. Clements, Canada, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,294 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single census subdivision.

It is the 442th largest in Manitoba since 2016 (of 509 with a page). Number 270 in Canada in 2021, of 304.

Compare with…

We have the official CWFIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by census subdivision is there.

Burnt area: 1,294ha; official perimeter (CWFIS)
Duration: 1day; 16 May 2021 – 16 May 2021
Census subdivisions hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 16 May; 2021
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index

The weather it burned in

26°high

47km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.4 mm on 20 May.

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 0.8% of the area of London (13 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 census subdivision

St. Clements where it started

1,292 ha

1.6 %

Burnt area inside each census subdivision, 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 area0.22 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.22 hectares of 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)
16 May	26.4 °C	20 %	47 km/h	0.5 mm	High 26
17 May after	29.5 °C	14 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
18 May after	28.0 °C	28 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
19 May after	25.1 °C	45 %	48 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 21
20 May after	17.0 °C	69 %	55 km/h	4.4 mm	Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 May 2021

After · 23 May 2021

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.

Frequently asked questions

How long did the St. Clements fire last?: It burned between 16 May 2021 and 16 May 2021: 1 day, according to the dates recorded by Canada’s CWFIS and the heat detections seen by satellite.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter mapped by Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) is 1,294 hectares (12.9 km²). Other tallies, such as those of provincial agencies, may give slightly different figures.
Which census subdivisions burned?: The fire only entered St. Clements (1,292 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 26.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the official burnt perimeter of Canada’s CWFIS (NBAC, Natural Resources Canada) or, for the current season and until NBAC publishes it, the one rebuilt by GWIS (Copernicus); from NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots; and from the administrative boundaries of Canada. 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 ↗
CWFIS · Interactive map ↗

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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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: NBAC (Natural Resources Canada), 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 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: it comes from the National Burned Area Composite (NBAC) of the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS), Natural Resources Canada, which maps it on satellite imagery and publishes it under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Until NBAC publishes the current season, this year’s fires carry the perimeter rebuilt from heat detections by GWIS (Copernicus, CC BY 4.0), which is approximate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Census subdivision boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per census subdivision is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from official figures.

Where it burned