Kayford Mountain Fire

199131,488 acresWest Virginia

The Kayford Mountain Fire burned 31,488 acres, about 49 square miles, across 4 counties. It began on October 27, 1991.

Watch how it happened

Kayford Mountain Fire · 1991

How it happened

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

About this replay

IgnitionOctober 27, 1991Historical replay — order not recorded

Final area31,488 ac

Revealed—

Counties4

Fire milestones

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

Manhattan, to scale23 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 Kayford Mountain Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	62%	19,661
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	36%	11,355
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	1.5%	472

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

Kanawha County	WV	11,497
Raleigh County	WV	11,105
Boone County	WV	4,912
Fayette County	WV	3,994

Other large fires in West Virginia in 1991

Jennings Creek Fire29,291 acres
White Oak Branch Fire25,537 acres

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