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West Fork Fire, August 2017 Lincoln

Out · last detection 31 Aug 2017, 20:29 UTC

The fire started on 30 August 2017 in Lincoln, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 8,557 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 34th largest in Montana since 2016 (of 302 with a page). Number 97 in United States in 2017, of 619.

Burnt area
8,557ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
30 Aug 2017 – 30 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
30 Aug
2017
Heat detections
1,978
in a single hotspot: 364 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Aug30 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

31

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
66km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 40 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 12.4 mm on 18 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. Lincoln where it started
    8,561 ha reached on 31 Aug
    0.9 %

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)
30 Aug 33.1 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.6 mm Very high 40
31 Aug after 26.5 °C 26 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Sept after 29.1 °C 19 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Sept after 31.9 °C 14 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Sept after 32.4 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Sept after 27.3 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Sept after 27.2 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
6 Sept after 30.4 °C 15 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Sept after 31.8 °C 19 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Sept after 27.3 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm High 34
9 Sept after 26.3 °C 35 % 66 km/h 0.9 mm High 27
10 Sept after 23.1 °C 25 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Sept after 27.1 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Sept after 27.1 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Sept after 21.4 °C 20 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Sept after 13.4 °C 44 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Sept after 13.3 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 Sept after 16.9 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
17 Sept after 19.5 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Sept after 13.9 °C 46 % 49 km/h 12.4 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Aug 2017
After · 6 Sept 2017

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 · 1,978Every 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 West Fork fire last?
It burned between 30 August 2017 and 30 August 2017: 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 8,557 hectares (85.6 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Lincoln (8,561 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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

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.