Kraft Springs Fire

200266,247 acresMontana and South Dakota

The Kraft Springs Fire burned 66,247 acres, about 104 square miles, across 2 counties. It began on August 30, 2002.

Watch how it happened

Kraft Springs Fire · 2002

How it happened

Watch it burn in the order satellites saw it, coloured by how severely each place burned.

About this replay

Date (UTC)—Historical replay

Burned so far—acres

High severity—of the area so far

Detections410satellite fire pixels

Fire milestones

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

Burning nowAreas reached in the last half day of satellite passes

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

Timing: NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections (410 MODIS) inside the final perimeter; each place takes the time of its nearest detection, so the order is satellite-observed but interpolated between passes, roughly every 12 hours. Severity: Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (USGS, U.S. Forest Service), mapped from Landsat after the fire.

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 Kraft Springs Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	5.1%	3,386
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	32%	21,184
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	52%	34,409
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	11%	7,261

5% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 3,386 acres; 37% burned at moderate or high severity.

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

Carter County	MT	64,685
Harding County	SD	1,607

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