Dry Creek Complex

200949,880 acresWashington

The Dry Creek Complex burned 49,880 acres, about 78 square miles, across 2 counties. It began on August 20, 2009.

Watch how it happened

Dry Creek Complex · 2009

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

Detections85satellite 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 (85 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 Dry Creek Complex

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	17%	8,525
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	72%	35,807
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	11%	5,525

No part of the fire was classed as high severity; 17% 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

Yakima County	WA	34,680
Benton County	WA	15,163

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