How long did the Three Rivers Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (26 April 2021). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 10 May 2021 (15 days from 26 April 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 2,578 hectares (25.8 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire entered 2 counties: Lincoln (2,531 ha, 0.2 %); Otero (39 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 19.2 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 84 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.

US · United States · 2021-04-26 → 2021-05-10

Three Rivers Fire, April 2021 Lincoln, Otero

Out · last detection 10 May 2021, 09:30 UTC

The fire started on 26 April 2021 in Lincoln, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 2,578 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the 62th largest in New Mexico since 2016 (of 204 with a page). Number 137 in United States in 2021, of 385.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Blue 2 · 2024 Mcbride · 2022 Salt · 2024 Soldier Canyon · 2018

Burnt area: 2,578ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 15days; 26 Apr 2021 – 10 May 2021
Counties hit: 2; counties
Started on: 26 Apr; 2021
Heat detections: 126; in a single hotspot: 605 MW
Danger at start: 43; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.6GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Apr10 May

Play back 10 May 2021

How it evolved, day by day

26 Apr 6 May 9 May 10 May

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

The weather it burned in

19°high

84km/h · peak gust

5%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 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 1.6% of the area of London (26 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

Lincoln where it started

2,531 ha reached on 26 Apr

0.2 %
Otero

39 ha reached on 26 Apr

0.0 %

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 area0.33 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.33 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
26 Apr	15.4 °C	7 %	76 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
27 Apr	8.9 °C	10 %	84 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 43
28 Apr	4.9 °C	30 %	45 km/h	4.7 mm	Very low 1
29 Apr	6.5 °C	34 %	78 km/h	7.0 mm	Very low 0
30 Apr	9.9 °C	27 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 2
1 May	16.0 °C	21 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
2 May	17.7 °C	5 %	70 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
3 May	11.8 °C	13 %	44 km/h	1.1 mm	Low 10
4 May	12.3 °C	22 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
5 May	17.7 °C	10 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
6 May	19.2 °C	9 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
7 May	18.9 °C	18 %	65 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
8 May	17.3 °C	5 %	67 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
9 May	16.8 °C	6 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
10 May	16.8 °C	7 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
11 May after	18.0 °C	7 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
12 May after	15.8 °C	15 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
13 May after	17.5 °C	12 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
14 May after	17.9 °C	17 %	44 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 19
15 May after	17.3 °C	22 %	51 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 17
16 May after	17.9 °C	8 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
17 May after	14.2 °C	9 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
18 May after	11.2 °C	18 %	49 km/h	0.2 mm	High 30
19 May after	15.4 °C	22 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
20 May after	19.9 °C	9 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Apr 2021

After · 17 May 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 · 126Every 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 Three Rivers Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (26 April 2021). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 10 May 2021 (15 days from 26 April 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 2,578 hectares (25.8 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire entered 2 counties: Lincoln (2,531 ha, 0.2 %); Otero (39 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 19.2 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 84 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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

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. 126 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