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Windy Fire, January 2021 Perkins, Adams

Out · last measured on 14 Jan 2021

The fire started on 14 January 2021 in Perkins, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 6,827 hectares, spread across 2 counties.

It is the 4th largest in South Dakota since 2016 (of 48 with a page). Number 70 in United States in 2021, of 385.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cedar River · 2025

We have the official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC) for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by county is there.

Burnt area
6,827ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
14 Jan 2021 – 14 Jan 2021
Counties hit
2
counties
Started on
14 Jan
2021
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

3°high
103km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 17 Jan.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (68 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

  1. Perkins where it started
    5,673 ha
    0.8 %
  2. Adams
    1,188 ha
    0.5 %

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 2020
Built-up area2.5 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.5 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)
14 Jan 3.3 °C 33 % 103 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Jan after -1.6 °C 55 % 76 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
16 Jan after 4.9 °C 50 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
17 Jan after 2.8 °C 43 % 46 km/h 1.5 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Jan 2021
After · 21 Jan 2021

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in United States ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Windy Fire last?
It burned between 14 January 2021 and 14 January 2021: 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 6,827 hectares (68.3 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire entered 2 counties: Perkins (5,673 ha, 0.8 %); Adams (1,188 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 3.3 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 103 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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

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

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: MTBS (US Geological Survey and US Forest Service), official.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.