How long did the White River Fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (17 August 2020). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 6 September 2020 (21 days from 17 August 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 7,152 hectares (71.5 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Wasco (7,139 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 · 2020-08-17 → 2020-09-06

White River Fire, August 2020 Wasco

Out · last detection 6 Sept 2020, 21:06 UTC

The fire started on 17 August 2020 in Wasco, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 7,152 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 93th largest in Oregon since 2016 (of 327 with a page). Number 86 in United States in 2020, of 441.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Miller Road · 2022 Grasshopper · 2026 Larch Creek · 2024 Nena Springs · 2017

Burnt area: 7,152ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: ≈ 21days; 17 Aug 2020 – 6 Sept 2020
Counties hit: 1; counties
Started on: 17 Aug; 2020
Heat detections: 1,092; in a single hotspot: 371 MW
Danger at start: 43; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 399MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Aug6 Sept

Play back 6 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

18 Aug 21 Aug 24 Aug 27 Aug 29 Aug 30 Aug 2 Sept 5 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

55km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 57 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 4.5% of the area of London (72 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

Wasco where it started

7,139 ha reached on 18 Aug

1.2 %

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 area0.19 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.19 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)
17 Aug	35.7 °C	20 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
18 Aug	32.3 °C	30 %	39 km/h	1.5 mm	High 27
19 Aug	31.1 °C	20 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
20 Aug	29.2 °C	23 %	49 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 39
21 Aug	25.3 °C	42 %	55 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34
22 Aug	27.1 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
23 Aug	30.5 °C	18 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
24 Aug	27.7 °C	17 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
25 Aug	26.9 °C	25 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
26 Aug	28.2 °C	16 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
27 Aug	27.0 °C	21 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
28 Aug	30.6 °C	14 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
29 Aug	24.3 °C	21 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
30 Aug	24.4 °C	17 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
31 Aug	21.9 °C	46 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
1 Sept	32.3 °C	22 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
2 Sept	31.7 °C	19 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
3 Sept	35.3 °C	18 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
4 Sept	34.5 °C	18 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
5 Sept	28.5 °C	18 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
6 Sept	33.9 °C	13 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
7 Sept after	26.5 °C	22 %	74 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
8 Sept after	18.9 °C	13 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
9 Sept after	25.2 °C	13 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
10 Sept after	29.1 °C	12 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
11 Sept after	27.4 °C	17 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
12 Sept after	25.8 °C	23 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
13 Sept after	27.8 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
14 Sept after	25.4 °C	25 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
15 Sept after	24.5 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
16 Sept after	25.4 °C	30 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Aug 2020

After · 13 Sept 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 · 1,092Every 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 White River Fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (17 August 2020). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 6 September 2020 (21 days from 17 August 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 7,152 hectares (71.5 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Wasco (7,139 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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.

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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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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. 1,092 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