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Thunder Fire, June 2022 Kern

Out · last detection 23 Jun 2022, 10:02 UTC

The fire started on 22 June 2022 in Kern, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,045 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 276th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 297 in United States in 2022, of 493.

The power measured by the satellite is low (26.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
1,045ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
22 Jun 2022 – 22 Jun 2022
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
22 Jun
2022
Heat detections
28
in a single hotspot: 27 MW
Danger at start
15
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
118MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

23 Jun 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Jun22 Jun

How it evolved, day by day

2223

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
40km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 22 ha in 2021.

What happened to each town

  1. Kern where it started
    1,043 ha reached on 22 Jun
    0.0 %

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)
22 Jun 28.9 °C 27 % 40 km/h 2.6 mm Moderate 15
23 Jun after 28.9 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
24 Jun after 30.1 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Jun after 30.4 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Jun after 30.2 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Jun after 32.1 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
28 Jun after 30.7 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Jun after 30.8 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Jun after 28.6 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Jul after 28.5 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Jul after 26.7 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
3 Jul after 23.6 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Jul after 23.3 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Jul after 26.0 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Jun 2022
After · 29 Jun 2022

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 · 28Every 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 Thunder fire last?
It burned between 22 June 2022 and 22 June 2022: 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 1,045 hectares (10.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Kern (1,043 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.4 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class 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

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.

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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.

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.