How long did the Telegraph Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (1 June 2021). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 28 June 2021 (28 days from 1 June 2021), 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 107,815 hectares (1,078.2 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire entered 2 counties: Gila (78,261 ha, 6.3 %); Pinal (29,538 ha, 2.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.3 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 77, 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.

US · United States · 2021-06-01 → 2021-06-28

Telegraph Fire, June 2021 Gila, Pinal

Out · last detection 28 Jun 2021, 09:12 UTC

The fire started on 1 June 2021 in Gila, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 107,815 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the largest fire in Arizona since 2016 (of 380 with a page). Number 3 in United States in 2021, of 385.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Rockhouse · 2020 Griffin · 2020 Valley · 2020

Burnt area: 107,815ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 28days; 1 Jun 2021 – 28 Jun 2021
Counties hit: 2; counties
Started on: 1 Jun; 2021
Heat detections: 4,394; in a single hotspot: 2,254 MW
Danger at start: 54; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 4.9GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Jun28 Jun

Play back 28 Jun 2021

How it evolved, day by day

1 Jun 5 Jun 9 Jun 13 Jun 14 Jun 17 Jun 21 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

41°high

68km/h · peak gust

3%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 30 Jun.

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 68% of the area of London (1,078 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 county

Gila where it started

78,261 ha reached on 1 Jun

6.3 %
Pinal

29,538 ha reached on 4 Jun

2.1 %

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 2020

Built-up area9.6 ha

Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 9.6 hectares of built-up land and about 100 residents (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)
1 Jun	33.5 °C	10 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
2 Jun	33.4 °C	9 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
3 Jun	34.1 °C	10 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
4 Jun	34.7 °C	8 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
5 Jun	34.6 °C	9 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
6 Jun	33.8 °C	8 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
7 Jun	33.2 °C	6 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
8 Jun	31.7 °C	6 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
9 Jun	34.3 °C	7 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
10 Jun	33.2 °C	8 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
11 Jun	35.7 °C	4 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
12 Jun	38.9 °C	3 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
13 Jun	40.3 °C	4 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
14 Jun	40.4 °C	5 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
15 Jun	41.0 °C	9 %	48 km/h	0.2 mm	Very extreme 74
16 Jun	40.7 °C	10 %	31 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 58
17 Jun	40.3 °C	8 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 70
18 Jun	41.3 °C	7 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
19 Jun	40.4 °C	10 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
20 Jun	38.9 °C	11 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 77
21 Jun	36.5 °C	12 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
22 Jun	36.5 °C	14 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
23 Jun	29.5 °C	27 %	42 km/h	1.4 mm	High 30
24 Jun	32.4 °C	27 %	41 km/h	1.2 mm	High 30
25 Jun	34.3 °C	15 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
26 Jun	35.0 °C	12 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
27 Jun	36.7 °C	11 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
28 Jun	33.6 °C	21 %	68 km/h	0.6 mm	Very high 47
29 Jun after	33.0 °C	19 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
30 Jun after	33.4 °C	24 %	45 km/h	2.5 mm	High 30

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 May 2021

After · 5 Jul 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.

Detections table · 4,394Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Telegraph Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (1 June 2021). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 28 June 2021 (28 days from 1 June 2021), 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 107,815 hectares (1,078.2 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire entered 2 counties: Gila (78,261 ha, 6.3 %); Pinal (29,538 ha, 2.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.3 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 77, 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
NIFC · Fire maps ↗

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

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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 really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), official; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
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. 4,394 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 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.

Where it burned