Cedar Fire

201644,130 acresArizona

The Cedar Fire burned 44,130 acres, about 69 square miles, across 2 counties. It began on June 15, 2016.

Watch how it happened

Cedar Fire · 2016

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

Detections1,943satellite 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 (1,535 VIIRS and 408 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 Cedar Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	14%	6,223
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	49%	21,689
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	25%	10,909
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	8.8%	3,883
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	3.2%	1,423

14% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 6,223 acres; 63% 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

Navajo County	AZ	29,570
Gila County	AZ	14,592

Other large fires in Arizona in 2016

Jack Fire35,905 acres
Juniper Fire32,274 acres

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