Bald Fire

201439,760 acresCalifornia

The Bald Fire burned 39,760 acres, about 62 square miles, across 2 counties. It began on July 31, 2014.

Watch how it happened

Bald Fire · 2014

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

Detections1,679satellite fire pixels

Fire milestones

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

Burning nowAreas reached in the last half day of satellite passes

Boston, to scale48 square miles of land, drawn at the fire’s scale

Timing: NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections (1,451 VIIRS and 228 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 Bald Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	15%	6,156
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	31%	12,449
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	45%	17,889
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	7.9%	3,144
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.3%	113

15% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 6,156 acres; 47% 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

Lassen County	CA	25,142
Shasta County	CA	14,627

Other large fires in California in 2014

Happy Camp Complex118,399 acres
King Fire99,100 acres
Beaver Complex35,178 acres
Whites Fire34,479 acres
Knf Beaver Fire34,246 acres
Eiler Fire30,955 acres

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