Cache Creek Fire

201275,463 acresIdaho and Oregon and Washington

The Cache Creek Fire burned 75,463 acres, about 118 square miles, across 4 counties. It began on August 20, 2012.

Watch how it happened

Cache Creek Fire · 2012

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

Detections1,954satellite 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 (1,678 VIIRS and 276 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 Cache Creek Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	20%	14,938
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	45%	34,120
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	11%	8,054
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.4%	278
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	24%	18,074

No part of the fire was classed as high severity; 20% 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

Wallowa County	OR	62,121
Asotin County	WA	13,333
Nez Perce County	ID	34
Idaho County	ID	31

Other large fires in Idaho and Oregon and Washington in 2012

Long Draw Fire557,211 acres
Holloway Fire457,680 acres
Mustang Complex377,684 acres
Halstead Fire190,122 acres
Kinyon Road Fire171,373 acres
Miller Homestead Fire163,342 acres
Trinity Ridge Fire141,762 acres
Flat Top 2 Fire102,417 acres

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