Twitchell Canyon Fire

201042,943 acresUtah

The Twitchell Canyon Fire burned 42,943 acres, about 67 square miles, across 3 counties. It began on July 20, 2010.

Watch how it happened

Twitchell Canyon Fire · 2010

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

Detections650satellite 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 (650 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 Twitchell Canyon Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	41%	17,772
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	22%	9,307
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	15%	6,486
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	19%	7,988
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.4%	170
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	2.8%	1,221

41% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 17,772 acres; 63% 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

Beaver County	UT	16,932
Piute County	UT	15,447
Sevier County	UT	10,576

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