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Tehama fire, October 2026 Tehama

Out · last detection 8 Oct 2026, 10:34 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 5 October 2026 in Tehama, United States. It was active for 4 days, with 63 heat detections and an area with fire of about 742 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across a single county.

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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.

Area with fire
≈ 742ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
4days
5 Oct 2026 – 8 Oct 2026
Counties hit
1
counties
Started on
5 Oct
2026
Heat detections
63
in a single hotspot: 94 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
366MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Oct8 Oct
8 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

5 Oct 2026 · 677 MW · 24 6 Oct 2026 · 83 MW · 15 7 Oct 2026 · 337 MW · 22 8 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0
5 Oct 6 Oct 7 Oct 8 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
23km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

What happened to each county

  1. Tehama where it started
    742 ha reached on 5 Oct
    0.1 %

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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
5 Oct 36.8 °C 12 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Oct 37.3 °C 11 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
7 Oct 36.2 °C 14 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Oct 37.4 °C 13 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Oct after 34.5 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
10 Oct after 24.0 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 43
11 Oct after 22.5 °C 9 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
12 Oct after 21.5 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Oct after 23.6 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Oct after 28.8 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Oct after 31.3 °C 8 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
16 Oct after 33.1 °C 5 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Oct after 30.1 °C 12 % 22 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.

Before · 28 Sept 2026
After · 15 Oct 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 8 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 136 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 93: 6.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak136 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM10139 µg/m³
Optical depth0.89
345678910
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 · 63Every 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 Tehama fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 5 October 2026 to 8 October 2026 (4 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 742 hectares with fire (7.4 km²).
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Tehama (742 ha, 0.1 %).
Is the Tehama fire still active?
No fire detections since 8 Oct 2026, 10:34 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 23 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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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How we know this
  • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 742 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
  • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 63 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

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.