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Telegraph Fire, August 2023 Lincoln

Out · last measured on 30 Aug 2023

The fire started on 30 August 2023 in Lincoln, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 573 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 315th largest in Idaho since 2016 (of 379 with a page). Number 239 in United States in 2023, of 305.

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We have the official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC) for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by county is there.

Burnt area
573ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
30 Aug 2023 – 30 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
30 Aug
2023
Danger at start
53
Extreme · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

23°high
55km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 17.9 mm on 3 Sept.

This area had burned before

76% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 435 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.4% of the area of London (5.7 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 town

  1. Lincoln where it started
    572 ha
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each county, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
30 Aug 23.2 °C 21 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
31 Aug after 29.0 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Sept after 28.7 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.3 mm Extreme 50
2 Sept after 26.9 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.5 mm High 36
3 Sept after 21.6 °C 52 % 37 km/h 17.9 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Aug 2023
After · 6 Sept 2023

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 30 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak18 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1026 µg/m³
Optical depth0.25
2829303112
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Telegraph fire last?
It burned between 30 August 2023 and 30 August 2023: 1 day, according to the start date recorded by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) and the heat detections seen by satellite.
How much area did it burn?
The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 573 hectares (5.7 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Lincoln (572 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 23.2 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 55 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

Satellite cross-check

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
  • Perimeter: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), official.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 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.

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.