Tongue Complex (Crutcher)

200744,189 acresIdaho

The Tongue Complex (Crutcher) burned 44,189 acres, about 69 square miles, across Owyhee County. It began on July 6, 2007.

Watch how it happened

Tongue Complex (Crutcher) · 2007

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

Detections182satellite 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 (182 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 Tongue Complex (Crutcher)

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	0.5%	212
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	11%	4,687
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	51%	22,555
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	38%	16,717

under 1% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 212 acres; 11% 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

Owyhee County	ID	44,228

Other large fires in Idaho in 2007

Murphy Complex567,212 acres
East Zone Complex (Raines)318,567 acres
Cascade Complex (Monumental)317,014 acres
Rattlesnake Fire102,464 acres
Battle Creek Complex (Battle Creek)79,057 acres
Black Pine 2 Fire69,896 acres
Highway 93 Complex (West Basin)63,158 acres
Poe Cabin Fire59,657 acres

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