Butte Fire

201572,913 acresCalifornia

The Butte Fire burned 72,913 acres, about 114 square miles, across 2 counties. It began on September 9, 2015.

Watch how it happened

Butte 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

Detections3,056satellite 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 (2,639 VIIRS and 417 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 Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	23%	16,947
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	38%	27,673
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	24%	17,720
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	13%	9,137
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	1.8%	1,345
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.1%	91

23% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 16,947 acres; 61% 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

Calaveras County	CA	69,197
Amador County	CA	3,697

Other large fires in California in 2015

Rough Fire146,362 acres
Rocky Fire96,061 acres
River Complex78,468 acres
Valley Fire77,446 acres
Route Complex35,418 acres
Pattison Fire31,106 acres
Lake Fire30,396 acres

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