Unnamed Fire

1987131,408 acresMinnesota

The Unnamed Fire burned 131,408 acres, about 205 square miles, across 4 counties. It began on April 5, 1987.

Watch how it happened

Unnamed Fire · 1987

How it happened

See how severely each place burned, revealed outward from where it started.

About this replay

IgnitionApril 5, 1987Historical replay — order not recorded

Final area131,408 ac

Revealed—

Counties4

Fire milestones

Burn severityHigh, Moderate, Low, Unburned to low, Increased greenness

Washington, D.C., to scale61 square miles of land, drawn at the fire’s scale

Severity: Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (USGS, U.S. Forest Service), mapped from Landsat after the fire. Satellite fire detections begin in November 2000, so the order it burned in is not recorded and the map is revealed outward from the reported origin.

How severely it burned

Burn severity inside the final perimeter, classified from Landsat images taken before and after the fire.

Map of burn severity across the Unnamed Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	67%	88,439
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	22%	28,642
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	11%	14,321

Most of the area inside the perimeter burned at low severity or not at all.

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (U.S. Geological Survey and USDA Forest Service). Classes come from the change in a Landsat burn index (dNBR) between images before and after the fire; acres are each class’s share of the fire’s mapped area.

Where it burned

Acres inside each county, measured from the satellite-mapped perimeter.

Acres burned by county

Beltrami County	MN	103,322
Clearwater County	MN	23,401
Pennington County	MN	4,258
Marshall County	MN	418

Other large fires in Minnesota in 1987

Sandy Lake Fire26,620 acres

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (USGS and U.S. Forest Service). Type recorded: Wildfire.