Mill Fire

201229,899 acresCalifornia

The Mill Fire burned 29,899 acres, about 47 square miles, across Colusa County. It began on July 7, 2012.

Watch how it happened

Mill 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

Detections1,617satellite fire pixels

Fire milestones

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

Burning nowAreas reached in the last half day of satellite passes

Manhattan, to scale23 square miles of land, drawn at the fire’s scale

Timing: NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections (1,198 VIIRS and 419 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 Mill Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	20%	6,082
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	53%	15,722
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	23%	6,783
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	3.7%	1,119
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.6%	190

20% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 6,082 acres; 73% 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

Colusa County	CA	29,924

Other large fires in California in 2012

Rush Fire307,085 acres
Barry Point Fire91,493 acres
Chips Fire79,959 acres
Bagley Fire47,705 acres
North Pass Fire43,653 acres
Ponderosa Fire28,676 acres
Reading Fire26,861 acres

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