Wedge Canyon Fire

200351,995 acresMontana

The Wedge Canyon Fire burned 51,995 acres, about 81 square miles, across Flathead County. It began on July 18, 2003.

Watch how it happened

Wedge Canyon 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

Detections826satellite 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 (826 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 Wedge Canyon Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	32%	16,471
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	36%	18,647
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	25%	13,068
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	6.2%	3,229
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	1.1%	560

32% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 16,471 acres; 68% 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

Flathead County	MT	51,987

Other large fires in Montana in 2003

Missouri Breaks Complex137,971 acres
Robert Fire54,531 acres
Hobble Fire38,340 acres
Lincoln Complex (Snowbank)36,976 acres
Fish Creek Complex (Thompson Creek)33,782 acres
Little Salmon Creek Fire33,042 acres
Littlehawk Fire27,920 acres
Bartlett Mountain Fire27,613 acres

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