Heavens Gate Complex (Black Butte)

200630,690 acresIdaho

The Heavens Gate Complex (Black Butte) burned 30,690 acres, about 48 square miles, across Idaho County. It began on August 16, 2006.

Watch how it happened

Heavens Gate Complex (Black Butte) · 2006

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

Detections285satellite fire pixels

Fire milestones

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

Burning nowAreas reached in the last half day of satellite passes

Manhattan, to scale23 square miles of land, drawn at the fire’s scale

Timing: NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections (285 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 Heavens Gate Complex (Black Butte)

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	3.0%	915
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	11%	3,424
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	74%	22,759
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	11%	3,395
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.6%	198

3% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 915 acres; 14% 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

Idaho County	ID	30,709

Other large fires in Idaho in 2006

Crystal Fire218,571 acres
Sailor Cap Fire62,679 acres
Foster Gulch Fire52,456 acres
Stone 2 Fire50,659 acres
Rattlesnake Complex48,305 acres
Middle Fork Complex33,857 acres
Red Mountain Fire33,388 acres
Southfork Complex (Cougar)27,914 acres

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