Tartar Fire, July 2026 Washington
The fire started on 24 July 2026 in Washington, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 63,951 hectares, spread across a single county.
It is the 3th largest in Idaho since 2016 (of 379 with a page). Number 6 in United States in 2026, of 423.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 63,951ha
- official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
- Duration
- ≈ 8days
- 24 Jul 2026 – 31 Jul 2026
- Counties hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 24 Jul
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 613
- in a single hotspot: 1,259 MW
- Danger at start
- 40
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.5GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,918 ha in 2018, 594 ha in 2022, 5,275 ha in 2024, 21 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,277 ha that had burned before.
- 5,275 ha Mineral fire, September 2024 6,320 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 749 ha Mountain Man fire, September 2018 752 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 638 ha Indian Head fire, July 2018 653 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 594 ha Rock Creek fire, September 2022 600 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 531 ha Rock Creek fire, July 2018 541 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 21 ha Dunes fire, June 2025 429 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Washington where it started63,854 ha reached on 24 Jul17 %
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 3.7 hectares of built-up land and about 70 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Jul | 34.8 °C | 12 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 25 Jul | 34.0 °C | 7 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 26 Jul | 31.2 °C | 16 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 27 Jul | 30.4 °C | 17 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 28 Jul | 31.6 °C | 17 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 29 Jul | 31.1 °C | 23 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 30 Jul | 32.1 °C | 21 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 31 Jul | 34.8 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 1 Aug after | 35.0 °C | 13 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 2 Aug after | 25.6 °C | 15 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 3 Aug after | 25.1 °C | 17 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 4 Aug after | 28.1 °C | 14 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 5 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 14 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 6 Aug after | 33.6 °C | 13 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 7 Aug after | 35.0 °C | 13 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 8 Aug after | 34.2 °C | 12 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 9 Aug after | 32.0 °C | 14 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 10 Aug after | 31.6 °C | 11 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
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 28 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 289 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 205: 14 times the WHO daily 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)
Detections table · 613Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,113 haKeithly WashingtonJuly 2018 · 4 days · 17 km away
- 31,931 haFox BakerJuly 2026 · 13 days · 19 km away
- 12,563 haThompson BakerJuly 2024 · 1 day · 31 km away
- 8,849 haCoyote BakerJuly 2024 · 1 day · 31 km away
- 15,603 haWillow Creek MalheurJune 2022 · 2 days · 34 km away
- 118,838 haDurkee MalheurJuly 2024 · 7 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Tartar Fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (24 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 31 July 2026 (8 days from 24 July 2026), 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 63,951 hectares (639.5 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
- Which counties burned?
- The fire only entered Washington (63,854 ha, 17 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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 ›
- 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.
- 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. 613 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.