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St. James fire, November 2026 St. James

Dying down · last detection 9 Nov 2026, 19:17 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 3 November 2026 in St. James, United States. It has been active for 7 days, with 31 heat detections and an area with fire of about 420 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across a single county.

NIFC has not yet published the perimeter of this fire. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). When the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.

Is it still active?

No detections since 9 Nov 2026, 19:17 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Area with fire
≈ 420ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
7days
3 Nov 2026 – 9 Nov 2026
Counties hit
1
counties
Started on
3 Nov
2026
Heat detections
31
in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start
3
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
104MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Nov9 Nov
9 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

3 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0 4 Nov 2026 · 148 MW · 13 5 Nov 2026 · 177 MW · 10 7 Nov 2026 · 55 MW · 4 9 Nov 2026 · 35 MW · 4
3 Nov 4 Nov 5 Nov 7 Nov 9 Nov

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
31km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

What happened to each county

  1. St. James where it started
    420 ha reached on 3 Nov
    0.6 %

Area with fire inside each county, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until NIFC publishes the official perimeter. 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.

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
3 Nov 27.9 °C 65 % 31 km/h 0.9 mm Very low 3
4 Nov 26.7 °C 61 % 25 km/h 0.4 mm Very low 4
5 Nov 26.3 °C 51 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
6 Nov 25.8 °C 48 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
7 Nov 24.1 °C 47 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
8 Nov 20.5 °C 38 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
9 Nov 21.7 °C 33 % 24 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 14

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 2.6, a minimum humidity of 65% and rain the day before. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 7.

FWI at the start 2.6
Minimum humidity 65 %
Days without rain 0
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Tiger Tank Fire, February 2026
721 ha 3 days FWI 2.5 Min. humidity 63 % 199 km away, in 2026

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.4 mm on 20 Feb.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 7. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Oct 2026
After · 9 Nov 2026

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 12 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1025 µg/m³
Optical depth0.24
7 Oct10 Oct13 Oct16 Oct
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 · 31Every 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 St. James fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 3 November 2026 to 9 November 2026 (7 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
How much area did it burn?
There is no official perimeter yet: NIFC has not published it. Heat detections rebuild about 420 hectares with fire (4.2 km²).
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered St. James (420 ha, 0.6 %).
Is the St. James fire still active?
No fire detections since 9 Nov 2026, 19:17 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.9 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, class Moderate.
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 · 12 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Area: ≈ 658 → ≈ 644 ha.
  2. Last day with fire: 27 October 2026 → 31 October 2026.
  3. Area: ≈ 728 → ≈ 658 ha.
  4. Start date: 22 October 2026 → 23 October 2026.
  5. Area: ≈ 546 → ≈ 728 ha.
  6. Start date: 18 October 2026 → 22 October 2026.
  7. Last day with fire: 24 October 2026 → 27 October 2026.
  8. Area: ≈ 616 → ≈ 546 ha.
  9. Start date: 16 October 2026 → 18 October 2026.
  10. Start date: 15 October 2026 → 16 October 2026.
  11. Area: ≈ 700 → ≈ 616 ha.
  12. Start date: 14 October 2026 → 15 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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
What do you think is wrong?

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
  • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 420 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
  • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 31 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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.