Big Cougar Fire

201465,339 acresIdaho and Oregon and Washington

The Big Cougar Fire burned 65,339 acres, about 102 square miles, across 3 counties. It began on August 3, 2014.

Watch how it happened

Big Cougar 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

Detections1,507satellite 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 (1,244 VIIRS and 263 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 Big Cougar Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	13%	8,650
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	34%	22,091
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	42%	27,666
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	10%	6,793
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.2%	122

13% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 8,650 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

Nez Perce County	ID	65,389
Wallowa County	OR	6
Asotin County	WA	1

Other large fires in Idaho and Oregon and Washington in 2014

Saddle Draw Fire283,891 acres
Buzzard Fire88,633 acres
South Fork Complex66,753 acres
Black Rock Fire40,766 acres
Shaniko Butte Fire39,843 acres
Somers Fire36,346 acres
Beaver Complex35,178 acres
Preacher Fire33,166 acres

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