How long did the Tellico Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (3 November 2016). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 12 November 2016 (10 days from 3 November 2016), 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 5,738 hectares (57.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire entered 2 counties: Swain (3,429 ha, 2.4 %); Macon (2,324 ha, 1.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 21.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.

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 · 2016-11-03 → 2016-11-12

Tellico Fire, November 2016 Swain, Macon

Out · last detection 12 Nov 2016, 18:19 UTC

The fire started on 3 November 2016 in Swain, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 5,738 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the 2th largest in North Carolina since 2016 (of 36 with a page). Number 63 in United States in 2016, of 475.

The power measured by the satellite is low (27.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Camp Branch · 2016 Alarka #5 · 2025 Collett Ridge · 2023 Boteler · 2016

Burnt area: 5,738ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 10days; 3 Nov 2016 – 12 Nov 2016
Counties hit: 2; counties
Started on: 3 Nov; 2016
Heat detections: 400; in a single hotspot: 28 MW
Danger at start: 12; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 215MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Nov12 Nov

Play back 12 Nov 2016

How it evolved, day by day

4 Nov 6 Nov 7 Nov 8 Nov 10 Nov 12 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

22°high

55km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 3.6% of the area of London (57 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

Swain where it started

3,429 ha reached on 6 Nov

2.4 %
Macon

2,324 ha reached on 4 Nov

1.7 %

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 2015

Built-up area2.7 ha

Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.7 hectares of built-up land and about 100 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
3 Nov	21.9 °C	51 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
4 Nov	18.9 °C	34 %	38 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 11
5 Nov	18.3 °C	34 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
6 Nov	19.8 °C	27 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
7 Nov	18.3 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
8 Nov	17.0 °C	31 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
9 Nov	13.1 °C	45 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
10 Nov	19.0 °C	16 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
11 Nov	16.8 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
12 Nov	14.2 °C	36 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
13 Nov after	13.9 °C	33 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
14 Nov after	15.5 °C	37 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
15 Nov after	14.4 °C	36 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
16 Nov after	17.1 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
17 Nov after	21.6 °C	28 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
18 Nov after	22.7 °C	23 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
19 Nov after	10.0 °C	35 %	73 km/h	0.2 mm	High 24
20 Nov after	6.0 °C	25 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
21 Nov after	9.8 °C	15 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
22 Nov after	12.3 °C	20 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 Oct 2016

After · 19 Nov 2016

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 · 400Every 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 Tellico Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (3 November 2016). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 12 November 2016 (10 days from 3 November 2016), 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 5,738 hectares (57.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire entered 2 counties: Swain (3,429 ha, 2.4 %); Macon (2,324 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 21.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.
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

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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.
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. 400 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 2015, 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