Mcdonald Fire

200692,781 acresNew Mexico and Texas

The Mcdonald Fire burned 92,781 acres, about 145 square miles, across 2 counties. It began on March 12, 2006.

Watch how it happened

Mcdonald Fire · 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

Detections52satellite 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 (52 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 Mcdonald Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	2.1%	1,947
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	79%	73,452
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	18%	16,768
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.2%	207
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.4%	406

No part of the fire was classed as high severity; 2% burned at moderate 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

Lea County	NM	88,783
Yoakum County	TX	4,007

Other large fires in New Mexico and Texas in 2006

East Amarillo Complex593,293 acres
Gladstone Fire44,105 acres
Cole Fire39,443 acres
Rocker B Fire37,379 acres
Bear Fire34,722 acres
Carbon Fire32,990 acres
Casa Fire27,424 acres
Buckle L 2 Fire25,166 acres

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