Taylor Creek Fire

201264,337 acresMontana

The Taylor Creek Fire burned 64,337 acres, about 101 square miles, across Powder River County. It began on July 3, 2012.

Watch how it happened

Taylor 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

Detections1,320satellite 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 (1,079 VIIRS and 241 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 Taylor Creek Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	11%	6,771
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	33%	21,168
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	29%	18,617
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	7.4%	4,739
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	20%	13,030

11% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 6,771 acres; 43% 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

Powder River County	MT	64,384

Other large fires in Montana in 2012

Mustang Complex377,684 acres
Ash Creek Fire253,270 acres
Chalky Fire132,639 acres
Sarpy Hills Complex83,940 acres
Delphia Fire40,412 acres
Welder Fire32,984 acres
Elbow Pass Complex28,984 acres

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