Carpenter Rd. Fire

201562,449 acresWashington

The Carpenter Rd. Fire burned 62,449 acres, about 98 square miles, across Stevens County. It began on August 15, 2015.

Watch how it happened

Carpenter Rd. 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

Detections5,449satellite 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 (4,429 VIIRS and 1,020 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 Carpenter Rd. Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	4.0%	2,508
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	24%	15,180
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	49%	30,825
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	22%	13,775
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.3%	161

4% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 2,508 acres; 28% 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

Stevens County	WA	62,489

Other large fires in Washington in 2015

North Star Fire218,484 acres
Tunk Block Fire180,097 acres
Lime Belt Fire137,116 acres
Butte Creek Fire79,362 acres
Wolverine Fire66,339 acres
Black Canyon Fire61,415 acres
Stickpin Fire54,091 acres
Cougar Creek Fire51,849 acres

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