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Trail Ridge Fire, August 2022 Ravalli, Beaverhead

Out · last detection 29 Sept 2022, 09:23 UTC

The fire started on 26 August 2022 in Ravalli, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 35 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 7,908 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the 38th largest in Montana since 2016 (of 302 with a page). Number 71 in United States in 2022, of 493.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Trail Creek · 2021Ravalli · 2026Ravalli · 2026Beaver Creek · 2018

Burnt area
7,908ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
≈ 35days
26 Aug 2022 – 29 Sept 2022
Counties hit
2
counties
Started on
26 Aug
2022
Heat detections
1,559
in a single hotspot: 1,399 MW
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
1.8GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Aug29 Sept
29 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

28 Aug 2022 · 12 MW · 2 29 Aug 2022 · 56 MW · 2 30 Aug 2022 · 161 MW · 13 31 Aug 2022 · 2,002 MW · 42 1 Sept 2022 · 1,201 MW · 54 2 Sept 2022 · 1,730 MW · 77 3 Sept 2022 · 513 MW · 52 4 Sept 2022 · 2,165 MW · 89 5 Sept 2022 · 6,845 MW · 161 6 Sept 2022 · 14,097 MW · 238 7 Sept 2022 · 3,927 MW · 284 8 Sept 2022 · 1,864 MW · 91 9 Sept 2022 · 457 MW · 73 10 Sept 2022 · 495 MW · 49 11 Sept 2022 · 3,019 MW · 145 12 Sept 2022 · 7,420 MW · 144 13 Sept 2022 · 1 MW · 1 17 Sept 2022 · 65 MW · 6 18 Sept 2022 · 3 MW · 1 19 Sept 2022 · 3 MW · 2 20 Sept 2022 · 3 MW · 1 21 Sept 2022 · 6 MW · 1 26 Sept 2022 · 50 MW · 3 27 Sept 2022 · 63 MW · 6 28 Sept 2022 · 1,128 MW · 14 29 Sept 2022 · 13 MW · 8
28 Aug 1 Sept 5 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 13 Sept 20 Sept 28 Sept

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
66km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.0 mm on 1 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5% of the area of London (79 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

  1. Ravalli where it started
    4,020 ha reached on 30 Aug
    0.6 %
  2. Beaverhead
    3,898 ha reached on 28 Aug
    0.3 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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 Aug 21.4 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
27 Aug 20.6 °C 29 % 61 km/h 0.3 mm High 22
28 Aug 19.4 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
29 Aug 25.1 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
30 Aug 27.5 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
31 Aug 28.6 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Sept 26.2 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
2 Sept 28.1 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Sept 28.5 °C 15 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Sept 27.8 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Sept 26.6 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Sept 29.5 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 Sept 27.8 °C 18 % 66 km/h 0.9 mm Very high 40
8 Sept 18.4 °C 15 % 50 km/h 1.0 mm High 26
9 Sept 14.6 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
10 Sept 20.6 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
11 Sept 23.4 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Sept 23.6 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Sept 13.4 °C 41 % 20 km/h 3.8 mm Very low 3
14 Sept 18.5 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm Low 7
15 Sept 16.4 °C 42 % 27 km/h 2.9 mm Very low 3
16 Sept 13.9 °C 56 % 37 km/h 2.8 mm Very low 2
17 Sept 16.9 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm Low 5
18 Sept 18.0 °C 36 % 41 km/h 2.0 mm Very low 5
19 Sept 18.2 °C 37 % 43 km/h 0.8 mm Low 9
20 Sept 18.9 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 16
21 Sept 18.8 °C 30 % 39 km/h 3.9 mm Very low 3
22 Sept 10.0 °C 73 % 56 km/h 14.0 mm Very low 0
23 Sept 15.4 °C 36 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
24 Sept 18.6 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
25 Sept 21.3 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
26 Sept 22.6 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
27 Sept 22.2 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
28 Sept 22.5 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 19
29 Sept 12.7 °C 44 % 46 km/h 2.2 mm Very low 3
30 Sept after 11.3 °C 45 % 28 km/h 0.3 mm Very low 4
1 Oct after 7.6 °C 86 % 26 km/h 7.0 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Aug 2022
After · 6 Oct 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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 24 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1029 µg/m³
Optical depth0.31
242526272829
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)

Detections table · 1,559Every 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 Trail Ridge Fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (26 August 2022). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 29 September 2022 (35 days from 26 August 2022), 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 7,908 hectares (79.1 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire entered 2 counties: Ravalli (4,020 ha, 0.6 %); Beaverhead (3,898 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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

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
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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.

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. 1,559 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.