How long did the Triple Nickle Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (4 August 2019). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 31 August 2019 (28 days from 4 August 2019), 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 3,165 hectares (31.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire entered 2 counties: McKinley (3,018 ha, 0.2 %); Cibola (149 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 47 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 · 2019-08-04 → 2019-08-31

Triple Nickle Fire, August 2019 McKinley, Cibola

Out · last detection 31 Aug 2019, 09:18 UTC

The fire started on 4 August 2019 in McKinley, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 3,165 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the 46th largest in New Mexico since 2016 (of 204 with a page). Number 89 in United States in 2019, of 367.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vereda Blanca · 2025

Burnt area: 3,165ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 28days; 4 Aug 2019 – 31 Aug 2019
Counties hit: 2; counties
Started on: 4 Aug; 2019
Heat detections: 245; in a single hotspot: 104 MW
Danger at start: 3; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 145MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Aug31 Aug

Play back 31 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

16 Aug 22 Aug 24 Aug 26 Aug 28 Aug 30 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

31°high

47km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 1 Sept.

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 2% of the area of London (32 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

McKinley where it started

3,018 ha reached on 16 Aug

0.2 %
Cibola

149 ha reached on 24 Aug

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 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)
4 Aug	22.8 °C	44 %	24 km/h	3.1 mm	Very low 3
5 Aug	27.0 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
6 Aug	25.2 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 20
7 Aug	24.9 °C	33 %	36 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 15
8 Aug	25.8 °C	28 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
9 Aug	24.2 °C	24 %	37 km/h	3.4 mm	Low 6
10 Aug	22.7 °C	40 %	23 km/h	1.7 mm	Low 6
11 Aug	18.1 °C	61 %	29 km/h	12.6 mm	Very low 0
12 Aug	24.0 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.5 mm	Very low 4
13 Aug	25.3 °C	22 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 11
14 Aug	24.2 °C	22 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
15 Aug	26.2 °C	20 %	31 km/h	0.3 mm	High 22
16 Aug	26.6 °C	13 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
17 Aug	26.7 °C	10 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
18 Aug	28.0 °C	11 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
19 Aug	28.3 °C	11 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
20 Aug	28.8 °C	11 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
21 Aug	27.1 °C	16 %	36 km/h	1.2 mm	High 23
22 Aug	27.1 °C	9 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
23 Aug	25.7 °C	13 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
24 Aug	28.4 °C	11 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
25 Aug	29.6 °C	11 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
26 Aug	30.6 °C	11 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 40
27 Aug	29.1 °C	12 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
28 Aug	29.0 °C	10 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
29 Aug	27.0 °C	16 %	36 km/h	2.2 mm	Moderate 15
30 Aug	28.3 °C	12 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
31 Aug	28.6 °C	9 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
1 Sept after	27.9 °C	18 %	26 km/h	1.5 mm	High 24

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Jul 2019

After · 7 Sept 2019

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 · 245Every 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

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Frequently asked questions

How long did the Triple Nickle Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (4 August 2019). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 31 August 2019 (28 days from 4 August 2019), 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 3,165 hectares (31.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire entered 2 counties: McKinley (3,018 ha, 0.2 %); Cibola (149 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 47 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.

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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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What really happened?

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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. 245 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