How long did the West Cavanal Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (1 February 2016). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 29 February 2016 (32 days from 29 January 2016), 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 5,302 hectares (53.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Le Flore (5,324 ha, 1.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 24.3 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 80 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, 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.

US · United States · 2016-01-29 → 2016-02-29

West Cavanal Fire, January 2016 Le Flore

Out · last detection 29 Feb 2016, 18:39 UTC

The fire started on 29 January 2016 in Le Flore, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 5,302 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 23th largest in Oklahoma since 2016 (of 284 with a page). Number 68 in United States in 2016, of 475.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Blue Mountain · 2021 Walker · 2024 Little Fourche · 2017 Green Cabin Fire · 2016

Burnt area: 5,302ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 32days; 29 Jan 2016 – 29 Feb 2016
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 29 Jan; 2016
Heat detections: 193; in a single hotspot: 32 MW
Danger at start: 9; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 33MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jan29 Feb

Play back 29 Feb 2016

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jan 2 Feb 6 Feb 12 Feb 13 Feb 17 Feb 28 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

24°high

80km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.1 mm on 1 Mar.

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 3.3% of the area of London (53 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

Le Flore where it started

5,324 ha reached on 29 Jan

1.3 %

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 2015

Built-up area0.24 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.24 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
29 Jan	22.5 °C	17 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
30 Jan	22.9 °C	26 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
31 Jan	21.4 °C	40 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
1 Feb	19.1 °C	39 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
2 Feb	17.6 °C	20 %	67 km/h	1.5 mm	Low 6
3 Feb	8.2 °C	32 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
4 Feb	9.4 °C	16 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
5 Feb	12.1 °C	21 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
6 Feb	12.5 °C	23 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
7 Feb	14.9 °C	30 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
8 Feb	7.9 °C	23 %	80 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
9 Feb	8.1 °C	25 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
10 Feb	16.5 °C	22 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
11 Feb	17.7 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
12 Feb	15.4 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
13 Feb	12.8 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
14 Feb	13.0 °C	34 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
15 Feb	16.8 °C	27 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
16 Feb	16.1 °C	29 %	55 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 14
17 Feb	19.7 °C	21 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
18 Feb	24.3 °C	16 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
19 Feb	23.7 °C	38 %	66 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
20 Feb	21.2 °C	63 %	48 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 10
21 Feb	21.9 °C	37 %	32 km/h	0.8 mm	Low 9
22 Feb	15.9 °C	43 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
23 Feb	10.2 °C	59 %	50 km/h	41.1 mm	Very low 0
24 Feb	9.9 °C	38 %	55 km/h	3.9 mm	Very low 0
25 Feb	9.7 °C	30 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 1
26 Feb	12.8 °C	26 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 2
27 Feb	21.6 °C	23 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
28 Feb	19.2 °C	52 %	66 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
29 Feb	22.8 °C	37 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
1 Mar after	16.2 °C	34 %	57 km/h	11.1 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Jan 2016

After · 7 Mar 2016

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 · 193Every 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

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Frequently asked questions

How long did the West Cavanal Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (1 February 2016). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 29 February 2016 (32 days from 29 January 2016), 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 5,302 hectares (53.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Le Flore (5,324 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 24.3 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 80 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, 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 · 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. 193 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 2015, 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