How long did the Tucker Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (28 July 2019). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 30 July 2019 (3 days from 28 July 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 5,717 hectares (57.2 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Modoc (5,737 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class Extreme.

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 · 2019-07-28 → 2019-07-30

Tucker Fire, July 2019 Modoc

Out · last detection 30 Jul 2019, 20:40 UTC

The fire started on 28 July 2019 in Modoc, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 5,717 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 119th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 50 in United States in 2019, of 367.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mammoth · 2025 Dalton · 2020 Caldwell · 2020 Lone · 2019

Burnt area: 5,717ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 3days; 28 Jul 2019 – 30 Jul 2019
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 28 Jul; 2019
Heat detections: 155; in a single hotspot: 409 MW
Danger at start: 55; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.6GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jul30 Jul

Play back 30 Jul 2019

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jul 30 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

35°high

43km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

It had gone 56 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

Modoc where it started

5,737 ha reached on 29 Jul

0.5 %

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.

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)
28 Jul	35.0 °C	9 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
29 Jul	32.1 °C	13 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
30 Jul	31.3 °C	12 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
31 Jul after	31.4 °C	11 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
1 Aug after	32.0 °C	8 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
2 Aug after	30.7 °C	12 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
3 Aug after	33.1 °C	9 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
4 Aug after	33.0 °C	10 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
5 Aug after	34.0 °C	5 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
6 Aug after	32.5 °C	6 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 62
7 Aug after	31.8 °C	10 %	46 km/h	0.2 mm	Extreme 69
8 Aug after	28.8 °C	12 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
9 Aug after	24.1 °C	13 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 21 Jul 2019

After · 6 Aug 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 · 155Every 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 Tucker Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (28 July 2019). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 30 July 2019 (3 days from 28 July 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 5,717 hectares (57.2 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Modoc (5,737 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class Extreme.
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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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. 155 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.

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