How long did the Willard fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 September 2016 to 13 September 2016 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 September 2016 to 11 September 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 1,144 hectares (11.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.

Which counties burned?

The fire only entered Lassen (1,134 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.

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 · 2016-09-11 → 2016-09-13

Willard Fire, September 2016 Lassen

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2016, 20:27 UTC

The fire started on 11 September 2016 in Lassen, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 1,144 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 268th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 241 in United States in 2016, of 475.

Compare with…

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Burnt area: 1,144ha; official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration: 3days; 11 Sept 2016 – 13 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 11 Sept; 2016
Heat detections: 116; in a single hotspot: 152 MW
Danger at start: 52; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 969MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Sept13 Sept

Play back 13 Sept 2016

How it evolved, day by day

11 Sept 12 Sept 13 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

29°high

55km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 22 Sept.

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 0.7% of the area of London (11 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 town

Lassen where it started

1,134 ha reached on 11 Sept

0.1 %

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)
11 Sept	29.1 °C	17 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
12 Sept	21.6 °C	27 %	24 km/h	1.0 mm	High 22
13 Sept	20.9 °C	19 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
14 Sept after	22.7 °C	20 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
15 Sept after	24.9 °C	17 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
16 Sept after	26.4 °C	11 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
17 Sept after	29.6 °C	12 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
18 Sept after	31.0 °C	19 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
19 Sept after	29.6 °C	18 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
20 Sept after	27.0 °C	17 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
21 Sept after	21.0 °C	8 %	64 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
22 Sept after	13.2 °C	36 %	52 km/h	2.5 mm	Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Sept 2016

After · 20 Sept 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 · 116Every 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 Willard fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 September 2016 to 13 September 2016 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 September 2016 to 11 September 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The official perimeter published by United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) is 1,144 hectares (11.4 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?: The fire only entered Lassen (1,134 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
NIFC · Fire maps ↗

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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What do you think is wrong?

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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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 September 2016 to 11 September 2016. 116 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.

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