How long did the Valley Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (4 October 2024). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 9 October 2024 (6 days from 4 October 2024), 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 3,995 hectares (40.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Ada (3,998 ha, 1.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 49 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 · 2024-10-04 → 2024-10-09

Valley Fire, October 2024 Ada

Out · last detection 9 Oct 2024, 09:28 UTC

The fire started on 4 October 2024 in Ada, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 3,995 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 85th largest in Idaho since 2016 (of 379 with a page). Number 92 in United States in 2024, of 371.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mm14 Highway21 · 2016 Table Rock · 2016 Ra 6 Ada Co Claremont · 2026 Ada · 2025

Burnt area: 3,995ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 6days; 4 Oct 2024 – 9 Oct 2024
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 4 Oct; 2024
Heat detections: 110; in a single hotspot: 137 MW
Danger at start: 49; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 332MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Oct9 Oct

Play back 9 Oct 2024

How it evolved, day by day

4 Oct 5 Oct 6 Oct 7 Oct 9 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

29°high

49km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.0 mm on 16 Oct.

This area had burned before

20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 804 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.5% of the area of London (40 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

Ada where it started

3,998 ha reached on 4 Oct

1.5 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area0.43 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.43 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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 Oct	29.1 °C	8 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
5 Oct	19.1 °C	15 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
6 Oct	23.8 °C	17 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
7 Oct	26.1 °C	13 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
8 Oct	26.5 °C	11 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
9 Oct	25.0 °C	15 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
10 Oct after	20.0 °C	34 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
11 Oct after	22.0 °C	24 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
12 Oct after	21.7 °C	23 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
13 Oct after	22.2 °C	23 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
14 Oct after	23.1 °C	19 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
15 Oct after	24.7 °C	14 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
16 Oct after	15.5 °C	31 %	44 km/h	5.0 mm	Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 Sept 2024

After · 16 Oct 2024

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 5 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 31 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak31 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1045 µg/m³

Optical depth0.23

WHO 15

23456789101112

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 · 110Every 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 Valley Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (4 October 2024). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 9 October 2024 (6 days from 4 October 2024), 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 3,995 hectares (40.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Ada (3,998 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 49 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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. 110 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 2025, 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