Burned area
satellite only2,001ha
Perimeter published by MTBS (USGS/USFS).
- Source
- MTBS (USGS/USFS)
- Date
- 18 Aug 2020 – 7 Sept 2020
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
US · United States · –
Woodward Fire, August 2020 Marin
Out · last detection 7 Sept 2020, 11:04 UTC
The fire started on 18 August 2020 in Marin, United States, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. United States agencies (MTBS / NIFC) mapped an official burnt perimeter of 2,001 hectares, spread across a single county.
It is the 208th largest in California since 2016 (of 442 with a page). Number 180 in United States in 2020, of 441.
Use this data
Compare with…
Suggestions: Timber · 2026Soberanes · 2016Thirty Seven · 2017
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only21days
18 Aug 2020 to 7 Sept 2020: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- MTBS (USGS/USFS) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 7 Sept 2020, 11:04 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only18 Aug 2020
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- MTBS (USGS/USFS) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 18 Aug 2020
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only197
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 322 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 18 Aug 2020 – 7 Sept 2020
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only557MW
Total radiative power on 20 August 2020; hotspots that day: 26.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 20 Aug 2020
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model19.2FWI · moderate
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 18 Aug 2020, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model24.2°C · 46% RH
High of 24.2 °C and minimum humidity of 46% on 7 September 2020; gusts of 49 km/h on 20 August 2020.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 18 Aug 2020 – 7 Sept 2020
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 2,001 ha
- Dates
- 18 Aug 2020 – 7 Sept 2020
- Name
- Woodward
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/woodward-fire-2020-08?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire woodward-fire-2020-08.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-08-18 | 0 | 0 | 22.6 | 15.5 | 47 | 26.5 | 46.8 | 0 | 19.2 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-08-19 | 45 | 503 | 20.5 | 15.8 | 51 | 27.9 | 45.4 | 0 | 26.2 | alto | 1 |
| 2020-08-20 | 26 | 557 | 19 | 12.7 | 61 | 28.7 | 49.3 | 0 | 26.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2020-08-21 | 19 | 93 | 19.6 | 13.5 | 71 | 28 | 46.4 | 0 | 22.5 | alto | 1 |
| 2020-08-22 | 31 | 286 | 18.2 | 13.3 | 70 | 18.9 | 29.9 | 0 | 15.8 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-08-23 | 14 | 296 | 15.8 | 11.7 | 74 | 13.7 | 25.2 | 0 | 13.4 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-08-24 | 5 | 44 | 17.1 | 12 | 69 | 14.5 | 24.5 | 0 | 13.4 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-08-25 | 3 | 30 | 14.4 | 10.7 | 76 | 16 | 25.9 | 0 | 12.8 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-08-26 | 1 | 1 | 14.9 | 11.3 | 73 | 25.5 | 37.1 | 0 | 16.4 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-08-27 | 0 | 0 | 14.1 | 9.9 | 76 | 14.1 | 24.1 | 0 | 11.8 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-08-28 | 0 | 0 | 13.5 | 9.7 | 79 | 13.6 | 23.8 | 0 | 11.7 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-08-29 | 0 | 0 | 13.2 | 10.2 | 82 | 13.5 | 26.3 | 0 | 11.2 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-08-30 | 18 | 52 | 13.5 | 9.7 | 77 | 13.3 | 26.6 | 0 | 11 | bajo | 1 |
| 2020-08-31 | 16 | 21 | 13.5 | 9.2 | 78 | 14.3 | 27.7 | 0 | 11.6 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-09-01 | 0 | 0 | 13.1 | 10.1 | 83 | 15.7 | 28.4 | 0 | 12.5 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-09-02 | 0 | 0 | 14 | 11.1 | 79 | 18.2 | 31 | 0 | 11.4 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-09-03 | 0 | 0 | 14.4 | 11 | 77 | 19.9 | 36 | 0 | 14.3 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-09-04 | 0 | 0 | 17.3 | 10.9 | 67 | 19.7 | 35.6 | 0 | 15.7 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-09-05 | 1 | 1 | 21.2 | 12.3 | 59 | 13.5 | 23 | 0 | 12.2 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-09-06 | 15 | 67 | 23.8 | 14.1 | 54 | 18.7 | 29.5 | 0 | 18.2 | moderado | 1 |
| 2020-09-07 | 3 | 30 | 24.2 | 17.4 | 46 | 20.9 | 36.4 | 0 | 23.7 | alto | 1 |
| 2020-09-08 | 0 | 0 | 21.8 | 15.1 | 40 | 18.6 | 32.8 | 0 | 31.1 | alto | 0 |
| 2020-09-09 | 0 | 0 | 15.6 | 11.9 | 76 | 12 | 26.3 | 0 | 16.6 | moderado | 0 |
| 2020-09-10 | 0 | 0 | 13.9 | 10.9 | 73 | 12.4 | 26.3 | 0 | 14.2 | moderado | 0 |
| 2020-09-11 | 0 | 0 | 16.1 | 10.2 | 70 | 14.5 | 30.6 | 0 | 15.1 | moderado | 0 |
| 2020-09-12 | 0 | 0 | 16.9 | 10.8 | 75 | 15.3 | 29.2 | 0 | 12.2 | moderado | 0 |
| 2020-09-13 | 0 | 0 | 14.6 | 10.4 | 78 | 17.3 | 29.9 | 0 | 13.4 | moderado | 0 |
| 2020-09-14 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 11.7 | 75 | 15.7 | 28.8 | 0 | 14.6 | moderado | 0 |
| 2020-09-15 | 0 | 0 | 16.7 | 11.8 | 78 | 16.8 | 28.1 | 0 | 13.1 | moderado | 0 |
| 2020-09-16 | 0 | 0 | 18.3 | 14.4 | 83 | 16 | 30.2 | 0 | 13.1 | moderado | 0 |
| 2020-09-17 | 0 | 0 | 17.6 | 14.3 | 80 | 19.9 | 34.9 | 0 | 15.1 | moderado | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: MTBS (USGS/USFS), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 2,001ha
- official perimeter (MTBS / NIFC)
- Duration
- ≈ 21days
- 18 Aug 2020 – 7 Sept 2020
- Counties hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 18 Aug
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 197
- in a single hotspot: 322 MW
- Danger at start
- 19
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 152MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
18 Aug7 Sept
7 Sept 2020
How it evolved, day by day
20 Aug
25 Aug
31 Aug
7 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
24°high
49km/h · peak gust
46%lowest humidity
It had gone more than two months 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?
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 county
-
Marin where it started1,993 ha reached on 19 Aug1.4 %
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 2020Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20
Inside 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)
Started with 60 days without rain: 7.0 % of the area in United States
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Aug | 22.6 °C | 47 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 19 Aug | 20.5 °C | 51 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 20 Aug | 19.0 °C | 61 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 21 Aug | 19.6 °C | 71 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 22 Aug | 18.2 °C | 70 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 23 Aug | 15.8 °C | 74 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 24 Aug | 17.1 °C | 69 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 25 Aug | 14.4 °C | 76 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 26 Aug | 14.9 °C | 73 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 27 Aug | 14.1 °C | 76 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 28 Aug | 13.5 °C | 79 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 29 Aug | 13.2 °C | 82 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 11 |
| 30 Aug | 13.5 °C | 77 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 31 Aug | 13.5 °C | 78 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 1 Sept | 13.1 °C | 83 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 2 Sept | 14.0 °C | 79 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 11 |
| 3 Sept | 14.4 °C | 77 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 4 Sept | 17.3 °C | 67 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 5 Sept | 21.2 °C | 59 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 6 Sept | 23.8 °C | 54 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 7 Sept | 24.2 °C | 46 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 8 Sept after | 21.8 °C | 40 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 9 Sept after | 15.6 °C | 76 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 10 Sept after | 13.9 °C | 73 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 11 Sept after | 16.1 °C | 70 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 12 Sept after | 16.9 °C | 75 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 13 Sept after | 14.6 °C | 78 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 14 Sept after | 15.0 °C | 75 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 15 Sept after | 16.7 °C | 78 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 16 Sept after | 18.3 °C | 83 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 17 Sept after | 17.6 °C | 80 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 19.2, a minimum humidity of 47% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 2.
FWI at the start
19.2
Minimum humidity
47 %
Days without rain
60+
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Woodward Fire, August 2020
2,001 ha
21 days
FWI 19.2
Min. humidity 47 %
Timber Fire, August 2026
10,259 ha
8 days
FWI 15.2
Min. humidity 50 %
221 km away, in 2026
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Soberanes Fire, July 2016
53,370 ha
79 days
FWI 29.8
Min. humidity 45 %
217 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.1 mm on 14 Oct.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 2. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
49km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 7 Sept, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 11 Aug 2020
After · 14 Sept 2020
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · 197Every 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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Woodward Fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (18 August 2020). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 7 September 2020 (21 days from 18 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 2,001 hectares (20.0 km²). Other tallies, such as daily incident reports, may give slightly different figures.
- Which counties burned?
- The fire only entered Marin (1,993 ha, 1.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 24.2 °C, humidity dropped to 46 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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
- NIFC · National Interagency Fire Center ↗
- InciWeb · Incident Information System ↗
- MTBS · Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity ↗
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 With cross-checks and a citable version
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: 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. 197 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 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.