Wolverine Fire

201566,339 acresWashington

The Wolverine Fire burned 66,339 acres, about 104 square miles, across Chelan County. It began on June 29, 2015.

Watch how it happened

Wolverine 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

Detections6,021satellite 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 (5,126 VIIRS and 895 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 Wolverine Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	27%	17,937
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	29%	18,922
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	32%	21,412
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	10%	6,736
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.5%	348
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	1.5%	985

27% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 17,937 acres; 56% 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

Chelan County	WA	66,329

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
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.