Old Fire

200390,111 acresCalifornia

The Old Fire burned 90,111 acres, about 141 square miles, across San Bernardino County. It began on October 25, 2003.

Watch how it happened

Old Fire · 2003

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

Detections630satellite 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 (630 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 Old Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	19%	16,901
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	32%	28,471
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	33%	29,733
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	16%	14,767
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.3%	239

19% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 16,901 acres; 50% 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

San Bernardino County	CA	90,180

Other large fires in California in 2003

Cedar Fire268,142 acres
Simi Fire107,745 acres
Piru Fire63,923 acres
Paradise Fire55,956 acres
Grand Prix Fire50,755 acres
Mine/Otay Fire39,392 acres

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