How long did the Tumbledown Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (7 July 2021). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 1 August 2021 (26 days from 7 July 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 4,556 hectares (45.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Shoshone (4,525 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 2021-07-07 → 2021-08-01

Tumbledown Fire, July 2021 Shoshone

Out · last detection 1 Aug 2021, 21:39 UTC

The fire started on 7 July 2021 in Shoshone, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 4,556 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 76th largest in Idaho since 2016 (of 379 with a page). Number 96 in United States in 2021, of 385.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Buck · 2017 Stateline Complex · 2021 Devils Pulpit · 2021 Caledonia · 2022

Burnt area: 4,556ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 26days; 7 Jul 2021 – 1 Aug 2021
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 7 Jul; 2021
Heat detections: 490; in a single hotspot: 242 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 167MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Jul1 Aug

Play back 1 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

8 Jul 12 Jul 16 Jul 20 Jul 25 Jul 29 Jul 1 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

37°high

55km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.1 mm on 2 Aug.

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 2.9% of the area of London (46 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

Shoshone where it started

4,525 ha reached on 8 Jul

0.7 %

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)
7 Jul	30.3 °C	23 %	55 km/h	1.5 mm	High 29
8 Jul	29.9 °C	20 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 Jul	31.2 °C	13 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 36
10 Jul	33.3 °C	11 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
11 Jul	32.5 °C	10 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
12 Jul	34.4 °C	9 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
13 Jul	33.3 °C	16 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
14 Jul	34.0 °C	13 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
15 Jul	32.5 °C	16 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
16 Jul	30.4 °C	17 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
17 Jul	31.3 °C	18 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
18 Jul	34.2 °C	18 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
19 Jul	31.0 °C	23 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
20 Jul	29.6 °C	32 %	36 km/h	1.1 mm	High 22
21 Jul	27.0 °C	32 %	49 km/h	0.8 mm	High 26
22 Jul	26.7 °C	15 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
23 Jul	28.2 °C	16 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
24 Jul	32.7 °C	12 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
25 Jul	33.6 °C	14 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
26 Jul	34.4 °C	12 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
27 Jul	31.3 °C	22 %	45 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 45
28 Jul	32.6 °C	28 %	29 km/h	2.1 mm	Moderate 17
29 Jul	34.2 °C	17 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
30 Jul	37.2 °C	11 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
31 Jul	37.0 °C	15 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
1 Aug	32.9 °C	30 %	28 km/h	6.8 mm	Low 7
2 Aug after	28.8 °C	36 %	47 km/h	5.1 mm	Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Jun 2021

After · 8 Aug 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 · 490Every 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 Tumbledown Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (7 July 2021). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 1 August 2021 (26 days from 7 July 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 4,556 hectares (45.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Shoshone (4,525 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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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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. 490 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