Stinky Fire, May 2026 Potter
The fire started on 17 May 2026 in Potter, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 945 hectares, spread across a single county.
It is the 184th largest in Texas since 2016 (of 327 with a page). Number 271 in United States in 2026, of 423.
Compare with…
We have the official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC) for this fire, but not yet its hotspots: NASA publishes the yearly hotspot archive only once the year closes. The page picks them up automatically when they are available.
- Burnt area
- 945ha
- official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
- Duration
- 3days
- 17 May 2026 – 19 May 2026
- Counties hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 17 May
- 2026
- Danger at start
- 79
- Very extreme · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.1 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?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each county
-
Potter where it started941 ha0.4 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 8.9 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 May | 34.2 °C | 9 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 79 |
| 18 May | 33.5 °C | 5 % | 70 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 90 |
| 19 May | 22.4 °C | 18 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 20 May after | 17.1 °C | 58 % | 36 km/h | 6.1 mm | Very low 4 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 19 May 2026 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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)
Other fires nearby
- 2,812 haWildhorse PotterFebruary 2026 · 1 day · 13 km away
- 3,128 haBent Willow PotterApril 2023 · 2 days · 18 km away
- 4,517 haOld Muddy Rd PotterMarch 2018 · 4 days · 23 km away
- 10,591 haDumas Complex PotterMarch 2017 · 2 days · 27 km away
- 2,717 haGreen Baca OldhamDecember 2016 · 2 days · 30 km away
- 9,780 haLittle Highline PotterApril 2022 · 2 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Stinky Fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 May 2026 to 19 May 2026 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 May 2026 to 17 May 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 945 hectares (9.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
- Which counties burned?
- The fire only entered Potter (941 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 70 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 90, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
- NIFC · National Interagency Fire Center ↗
- InciWeb · Incident Information System ↗
- MTBS · Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity ↗
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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: NIFC WFIGS (United States), official.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 May 2026 to 17 May 2026. 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.