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Windy Fire, September 2021 Tulare

Out · last detection 11 Sept 2021, 20:27 UTC

The fire started on 10 September 2021 in Tulare, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 39,579 hectares, spread across a single county.

It is the 26th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 16 in United States in 2021, of 385.

Burnt area
39,579ha
official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
Duration
1day
10 Sept 2021 – 10 Sept 2021
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
10 Sept
2021
Heat detections
9,988
in a single hotspot: 1,142 MW
Danger at start
11
Low · FWI index
Energy released
146MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

11 Sept 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Sept10 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

1011

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

The weather it burned in

26°high
44km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,008 ha in 2016, 12 ha in 2017, 39 ha in 2020.

What happened to each town

  1. Tulare where it started
    39,509 ha reached on 10 Sept
    3.2 %

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)
10 Sept 24.5 °C 34 % 40 km/h 1.9 mm Low 11
11 Sept after 24.3 °C 23 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
12 Sept after 25.7 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Sept after 25.0 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Sept after 25.6 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Sept after 24.5 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Sept after 22.6 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Sept after 24.7 °C 10 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Sept after 21.4 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Sept after 17.5 °C 35 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Sept after 25.9 °C 10 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Sept after 26.3 °C 8 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Sept after 24.1 °C 21 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Sept after 24.7 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Sept after 25.2 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Sept after 24.5 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Sept after 22.8 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
27 Sept after 20.0 °C 29 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Sept 2021
After · 17 Sept 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.

Detections table · 9,988Every 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 Windy fire last?
It burned between 10 September 2021 and 10 September 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 39,579 hectares (395.8 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
Which counties burned?
The fire only entered Tulare (39,509 ha, 3.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 25.7 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.