Lime Belt Fire

2015137,116 acresWashington

The Lime Belt Fire burned 137,116 acres, about 214 square miles, across Okanogan County. It began on August 14, 2015.

Watch how it happened

Lime Belt 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

Detections6,746satellite 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 (5,443 VIIRS and 1,303 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 Lime Belt Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	14%	18,804
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	35%	47,352
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	34%	46,669
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	14%	19,466
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	1.5%	2,053
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	2.0%	2,771

14% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 18,804 acres; 48% 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

Okanogan County	WA	137,098

Other large fires in Washington in 2015

North Star Fire218,484 acres
Tunk Block Fire180,097 acres
Butte Creek Fire79,362 acres
Wolverine Fire66,339 acres
Carpenter Rd. Fire62,449 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.