Butte Creek Fire

201579,362 acresOregon and Washington

The Butte Creek Fire burned 79,362 acres, about 124 square miles, across 3 counties. It began on August 14, 2015.

Watch how it happened

Butte Creek Fire · 2015

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

Detections5,147satellite 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 (4,318 VIIRS and 829 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 Butte Creek Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	3.5%	2,813
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	23%	18,276
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	60%	47,373
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	13%	10,487
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.2%	193
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.3%	221

4% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 2,813 acres; 27% 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

Wallowa County	OR	41,782
Columbia County	WA	28,392
Garfield County	WA	9,242

Other large fires in Oregon and Washington in 2015

Soda Fire282,664 acres
North Star Fire218,484 acres
Tunk Block Fire180,097 acres
Lime Belt Fire137,116 acres
Canyon Creek Complex109,753 acres
Cornet-Windy Ridge Fire102,480 acres
County Line 2 Fire68,167 acres
Wolverine Fire66,339 acres

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