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Ursus Fire, August 2022 Lewis and Clark

Out · last measured on 25 Aug 2022

The fire started on 25 August 2022 in Lewis and Clark, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,735 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 119th largest in Montana since 2016 (of 302 with a page). Number 223 in United States in 2022, of 493.

Burnt area
1,735ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
25 Aug 2022 – 25 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
25 Aug
2022
Heat detections
220
in a single hotspot: 347 MW
Danger at start
0
Very low · FWI index

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Aug25 Aug

The weather it burned in

30°high
84km/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: 3.8 mm on 13 Sept.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Lewis and Clark where it started
    1,741 ha reached on 1 Sept
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each county, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
25 Aug 20.1 °C 61 % 30 km/h 12.4 mm Very low 0
26 Aug after 20.1 °C 44 % 65 km/h 0.3 mm Very low 3
27 Aug after 17.2 °C 44 % 74 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
28 Aug after 16.6 °C 36 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
29 Aug after 23.7 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
30 Aug after 27.5 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
31 Aug after 28.2 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
1 Sept after 25.2 °C 25 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
2 Sept after 28.3 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
3 Sept after 30.3 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.4 mm High 30
4 Sept after 24.8 °C 20 % 61 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
5 Sept after 23.6 °C 22 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Sept after 27.1 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Sept after 27.0 °C 19 % 84 km/h 0.9 mm High 33
8 Sept after 15.8 °C 25 % 44 km/h 3.3 mm Very low 4
9 Sept after 10.0 °C 53 % 35 km/h 2.0 mm Very low 2
10 Sept after 20.1 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
11 Sept after 22.1 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
12 Sept after 21.8 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
13 Sept after 14.4 °C 54 % 21 km/h 3.8 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Aug 2022
After · 1 Sept 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 23 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 13 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak13 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1019 µg/m³
Optical depth0.26
232425262728
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 · 220Every 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 Ursus fire last?
It burned between 25 August 2022 and 25 August 2022: 1 day, according to the start date recorded by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) and the heat detections seen by satellite.
How much area did it burn?
The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 1,735 hectares (17.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Lewis and Clark (1,741 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.3 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 84 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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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.

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.