How long did the Twin Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (26 June 2020). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 9 July 2020 (14 days from 26 June 2020), 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 10,031 hectares (100.3 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Lincoln (9,998 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 72 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 82, class Very 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 · 2020-06-26 → 2020-07-09

Twin Fire, June 2020 Lincoln

Out · last detection 9 Jul 2020, 09:49 UTC

The fire started on 26 June 2020 in Lincoln, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 10,031 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 28th largest in Nevada since 2016 (of 237 with a page). Number 66 in United States in 2020, of 441.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Stewart Canyon · 2020 Big Rocks · 2021 Nat Out Nine · 2017 Gregerson · 2019

Burnt area: 10,031ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 14days; 26 Jun 2020 – 9 Jul 2020
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 26 Jun; 2020
Heat detections: 445; in a single hotspot: 198 MW
Danger at start: 55; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.1GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Jun9 Jul

Play back 9 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

26 Jun 27 Jun 28 Jun 29 Jun 5 Jul 6 Jul 9 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

34°high

72km/h · peak gust

3%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 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 6.3% of the area of London (100 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

Lincoln where it started

9,998 ha reached on 26 Jun

0.4 %

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 area0.18 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.18 hectares of 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 Jun	31.6 °C	9 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
27 Jun	34.4 °C	8 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
28 Jun	30.1 °C	11 %	72 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 82
29 Jun	21.3 °C	7 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
30 Jun	25.7 °C	8 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
1 Jul	28.7 °C	8 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
2 Jul	29.7 °C	12 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
3 Jul	30.7 °C	8 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
4 Jul	32.2 °C	6 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
5 Jul	33.5 °C	6 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
6 Jul	33.8 °C	7 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
7 Jul	33.1 °C	3 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 70
8 Jul	32.0 °C	4 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
9 Jul	32.4 °C	4 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
10 Jul after	34.0 °C	5 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
11 Jul after	36.0 °C	9 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
12 Jul after	36.4 °C	10 %	54 km/h	0.2 mm	Very extreme 76
13 Jul after	35.7 °C	8 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 75
14 Jul after	34.0 °C	5 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
15 Jul after	34.1 °C	7 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
16 Jul after	33.0 °C	7 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 71
17 Jul after	33.7 °C	9 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 70
18 Jul after	34.3 °C	6 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
19 Jul after	34.7 °C	6 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Jun 2020

After · 16 Jul 2020

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 · 445Every 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 Twin Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (26 June 2020). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 9 July 2020 (14 days from 26 June 2020), 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 10,031 hectares (100.3 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Lincoln (9,998 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 72 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 82, class Very 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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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. 445 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