Yellow Fire

200833,202 acresCalifornia

The Yellow Fire burned 33,202 acres, about 52 square miles, across San Diego County. It began on July 2, 2008.

Watch how it happened

Yellow Fire · 2008

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

Detections13satellite fire pixels

Fire milestones

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

Burning nowAreas reached in the last half day of satellite passes

San Francisco, to scale47 square miles of land, drawn at the fire’s scale

Timing: NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections (13 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 Yellow Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	0.6%	189
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	8.0%	2,671
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	40%	13,151
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	42%	14,059
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	8.1%	2,681
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	1.4%	452

1% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 189 acres; 9% 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 Diego County	CA	33,232

Other large fires in California in 2008

Basin Complex164,453 acres
Siskiyou-Blue 2 Complex (Blue 2)100,756 acres
Yolla Bolly Complex (Iron)94,807 acres
Panther Fire71,402 acres
Basin Complex (Indians)59,072 acres
Btu Lightning Complex (Long Branch-Jack)52,072 acres
Bear Wallow Complex (Ukonom)39,999 acres
Shu Lightning Complex (Moon)36,479 acres

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