Wood Buffalo fire, 17 July 2019 Wood Buffalo
The fire started on 17 July 2019 in Wood Buffalo, Canada, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 8,213 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single census subdivision.
It is the 71th largest in Alberta since 2016 (of 243 with a page). Number 28 in Canada in 2019, of 97.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 8,213ha
- official perimeter (CWFIS)
- Duration
- 9days
- 17 Jul 2019 – 25 Jul 2019
- Census subdivisions hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 17 Jul
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 1,339
- in a single hotspot: 275 MW
- Danger at start
- 17
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.9GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 20.6 mm on 26 Jul.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each census subdivision
-
Wood Buffalo where it started8,591 ha reached on 18 Jul0.1 %
Burnt area inside each census subdivision, 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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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 Jul | 28.3 °C | 31 % | 34 km/h | 0.5 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 18 Jul | 28.1 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 19 Jul | 22.0 °C | 35 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 20 Jul | 25.8 °C | 26 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 21 Jul | 30.6 °C | 26 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 22 Jul | 31.2 °C | 26 % | 32 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 23 |
| 23 Jul | 32.2 °C | 24 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 24 Jul | 27.9 °C | 37 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 25 Jul | 25.1 °C | 28 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 26 Jul after | 18.1 °C | 58 % | 35 km/h | 20.6 mm | Very low 0 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 1,339Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 30,950 haWood Buffalo14 June 2022 · 120 days · 17 km away
- 1,266 haWood Buffalo22 August 2022 · 46 days · 21 km away
- 1,806 haWood BuffaloMay 2025 · 3 days · 24 km away
- 1,016 haWood Buffalo30 June 2022 · 10 days · 27 km away
- 90,522 haWood Buffalo28 May 2023 · 123 days · 29 km away
- 45,024 haWood Buffalo26 June 2022 · 100 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Wood Buffalo fire last?
- It burned between 17 July 2019 and 25 July 2019: 9 days, according to the dates recorded by Canada’s CWFIS and the heat detections seen by satellite.
- How much area did it burn?
- The official perimeter mapped by Canada’s CWFIS (Natural Resources Canada) is 8,213 hectares (82.1 km²). Other tallies, such as those of provincial agencies, may give slightly different figures.
- Which census subdivisions burned?
- The fire only entered Wood Buffalo (8,591 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.2 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the official burnt perimeter of Canada’s CWFIS (NBAC, Natural Resources Canada) or, for the current season and until NBAC publishes it, the one rebuilt by GWIS (Copernicus); from NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots; and from the administrative boundaries of Canada. 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 ›
- CIFFC · Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre ↗
- CWFIS · Canadian Wildland Fire Information System ↗
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.
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.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: NBAC (Natural Resources Canada), official.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,339 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.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter is official: it comes from the National Burned Area Composite (NBAC) of the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS), Natural Resources Canada, which maps it on satellite imagery and publishes it under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Until NBAC publishes the current season, this year’s fires carry the perimeter rebuilt from heat detections by GWIS (Copernicus, CC BY 4.0), which is approximate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Census subdivision boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per census subdivision is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from official figures.